High-quality hydrocarbon fuel production from municipal mixed plastic waste using a locally available low-cost catalyst

Abstract

Thermal treatment of plastic waste into fuels has gained substantial prominence in the scientific community, but processing of municipal mixed plastic waste (MMPW) has still challenging issues due to the wide variance in plastic composition, size, decomposition behavior, and thermal behavior. Hence, the current study was aimed to address these problems by converting MMPW into high-quality hydrocarbon fuel and compare its behavior with conventional mixed virgin plastics (MVP) via thermochemical pyrolysis technology. A locally available low-cost catalyst i.e., CAT-1 of 10 wt% was employed to enhance the fuel yield. Yield patterns of the process were investigated to identify the optimum operating conditions and the maximum fuel yields of liquid fuel attained with MMPW, and MVP was 74.8 wt% and 86.1 wt%, respectively. Detailed chemical characterization of the fuel fractions revealed the presence of a wide variety of hydrocarbons disbursement i.e., C9 – C18. Non-condensable gas composition revealed the major percentage of ethane and propene along with a minor percentage of hydrogen. Physical characteristics of produced hydrocarbon fuel were found to be comparable with the conventional petroleum fuels i.e., higher heating value of 42.1 MJ kg−1, kinematic viscosity 2.48 cSt, and carbon residue value of 0.15 wt%, which signifies the application of the produced hydrocarbon fuel in automobiles, stationary engines and industrial heating appliances as a promising fuel candidate.