Conversion of mixed waste plastic into fuel for diesel engines through pyrolysis process: A review

Abstract

During the last decade, massive production of plastic materials causes a significant amount of waste. This growing trend in waste plastic, and the related negative effect on environment raised many concerns leading to propose different solutions for its disposal, recycle and re-use. Among different methods, landfilling, incineration and mechanical recycling are more conventional, however due to their environmental problems or economic issues, they would not be the best solutions for waste plastic management. The paper presents a review of a more effective process to recover the energy contained in these materials, with a focus of their use for producing fuel thorough the pyrolysis process. This conversion process does not only represent an environmentally friendly solution for the management of waste plastics, but also allows producing a liquid product which can be used for several energy-related applications. The focus of this review paper is to identify an optimum approach for production of maximum waste plastic pyrolysis oil with the characteristic similar to diesel fuel through investigation on various previous studies in this area. To reach this target, a review of the recent studies related to pyrolysis of waste plastics was carried out, and the main parameters affecting the liquid product yield were investigated. Then, the quality of several waste plastic oil (WPO) was compared to the conventional diesel fuels, based on the information reported about their physico-chemical properties, and their application in the diesel engine based on the parameters such as combustion, performance, and emission have been studied.