Production of an alternative fuel from a blend of polypropylene wastes and Jatropha distillates for Oil Well drilling

Abstract

A fabricated ablative pyrolysis reactor was used to extract oil from polypropylene (PP) wastes and Jatropha curcas (JC). The oils extracted were distilled at a temperature range of 250–320 ℃ and the percentage of oil yield was recorded. The distilled oil from PP and JC were mixed in different ratios of 9:1, 4:1, 7:3, and 3:2, respectively. The flashpoint, pour point, cloud point, viscosity, and density of the mixtures were evaluated based on different ASTM standards. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was used to identify the functional groups in the samples. The results were compared with those of conventional diesel oil. The oil yields were 73% for PP waste and 43.2% for JP. The physicochemical properties of the 3:2 combination of PP/JC were the closest to the conventional diesel samples with a viscosity of 11.40 cst compared with 11.07 cst of diesel, the density of 0.892 g/cc compared with 0.8849 g/cc of diesel and cloud point of 0 °F compared with 25 °F of diesel. The statistical response optimiser gives the blend of polypropylene and Jatropha to be 3.12:2 PP/JC and 3:2 PP/JC for viscosity and density, respectively. It also shows consistency on the experimented result and the predicted responses. The FTIR of PP and JC distillates were similar to each other because of the presence of absorptions at 2982, 2940, 2856, 1462–1458 cm-1 and the lowest absorption at 410 cm-1. However, the major differences were the various visible absorptions at 1706, 1604, 1376–743/cm in JC oil. The blend of 3:2 PP/JC distillate was discovered to have great potential in the drilling industry based on their physicochemical properties when compared to diesel oil.