Plastic fuel Extraction from Various Waste Plastics

Abstract

The rapid growth of the world population which leads to increase demand of plastic in many sectors such as construction, medical, engineering applications, automotive, aerospace and many food industries for packing purpose. These rapid populations of plastic create some serious issues to the environment and living beings. The plastics are non- degradable and emit poisonous gases during burning. In recent years, many researches being conducted to resolve the disposal issues of waste plastics and trying to convert it into useful products. The plastic is a material consists of any wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic compounds, which are long molecules built around chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms. The conversion of waste plastics to hydrocarbon (HC) fuel is an effective idea for disposing of waste plastics. It will be controlled plastic population and fulfill the needs of petroleum fuel in the future. As per the survey, the fossil fuels run out earlier in 2088 due to drastic growth of automobiles and high production cost. The waste plastic contains hydrocarbon with calorific value of 41- 47MJ and it is almost equal to the calorific value of fossil fuels. There are many methods being used to extract liquid HC fuel from waste plastics and it has been reviewed elaborately in this paper. It also reviews composition of various plastics like polyethylene terephthalate, high density polyethylene, low density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride and polypropylene polystyrene and analyse their properties. In addition, it includes the selection of plastic and catalyst for extraction process, research gap in the existing extraction methods and the effect temperature and process timing on oil yield.