Abstract
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is widely used in textile fiber, film, and bottles. Although PET bottle recycling has made great progress, other PET waste is still not recycled. Gasification could be an option for recycling or recovering energy and chemicals from PET waste. However, single stream PET steam gasification in fluidized bed is seldom investigated. In this paper, individual PET gasification experiments were then conducted in a lab-scale bubbling fluidized bed to investigate how gasifying agents, temperature, residence time and steam/fuel ratio affect the product composition. The results showed that, in steam gasification, steam was the main source of H2, but increasing the steam to fuel ratio cannot increase the H2 yield remarkably. Temperature was an essential parameter. Increasing temperature from 750 to 800°C improved the yields of H2 (+87.7%), the dominant gas product CO2 (+40.3%), and biphenyl (+123%) notably. In contrast to other common thermoplastics, high concentrations of CO2 and biphenyl are the prominent characteristics of PET steam gasification. In addition, plastic steam gasification optimizations for syngas applications were discussed.
Highlights
Plastics play a crucial role in the modern style of living because they are essential in many sectors, such as packaging, construction, agriculture, and households due to low density, corrosion resistance, and durability (Kunwar et al, 2016)
Plastic waste is mainly landfilled with other solid waste, but can remain in the soil semipermanently, because of the low degradability, which can result in reduced landfill capacity and soil contamination
Brachi et al (Brachi et al, 2014) reported the co-gasification of the olive husk (75% wt) with Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) (25% wt) pellets, where a mixture of steam and air was used as the gasifying agent, and found that high-yield H2 can be obtained from sufficient steam, and that part of required heat for endothermic steam gasification can be provided by air gasification
Summary
Plastics play a crucial role in the modern style of living because they are essential in many sectors, such as packaging, construction, agriculture, and households due to low density, corrosion resistance, and durability (Kunwar et al, 2016). Researchers make efforts to solve the problems of catalyst selectivity, solvent, reaction conditions, and final product separation (Al-Sabagh et al, 2016) Both mechanical recycling and solvolysis require high plastic purity, which means that the plastics to be recycled must be sorted carefully. Brachi et al (Brachi et al, 2014) reported the co-gasification of the olive husk (75% wt) with PET (25% wt) pellets, where a mixture of steam and air was used as the gasifying agent, and found that high-yield H2 can be obtained from sufficient steam, and that part of required heat for endothermic steam gasification can be provided by air gasification They found that higher temperature and steam/fuel ratios can increase hydrogen and CO2 yield, while reducing CO and methane. The results could provide a reference for PET-mixed fuel gasification analysis, as well as improving gasification methods
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