Studies of Liquid Fuel Formation from Plastic Waste by Catalytic Cracking Over Modified Natural Clay and Nickel Nanoparticles

Abstract

Plastics are the dominant part of waste. Recycling is a major challenge beside avoiding of plastic consumption. Development of economic catalysts is a crucial factor to provide cost effective recycling of plastics into fuels. The primary objective of this research is to use pure metallic nanoparticles and modified south Asian clay. These composite catalysts were investigated for the effectiveness and degradation of polymers into liquid fuels and compared their activity with commercially available catalytic material. A series of reactions were conducted in a 25 cm3 autoclave reactor under different conditions such as temperature, catalyst load, addition of active metals, and with nickel nanoparticles. The products distribution for the pyrolysis reactions were determined and compared with commercial kerosene, gasoline and diesel. Clay catalyst gave good liquid yield at 350 °C for low-density polyethylene and post-consumer poly-bags. 10% impregnation of nickel on natural clay gave maximum liquid yield 79.23% for LDPE, while for poly- bags it reached up to 76.01%. The amount of liquid yield was found to increase to 12% and 18.6% for LDPE and poly-bags, respectively on the impregnation of nickel on clay compared to neat clay. It could be demonstrated as well that nickel nanoparticles and molybdenum impregnation on clay give a good yield on liquid fuel. The final products are in the range of gasoline, kerosene and diesel.