Study on aluminum recovery from selected aluminum-containing packaging waste by pyrolysis system

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, consumers more frequently than not choose packaged food over fast food due to its convenience, high nutrition value, ease of preparation, and health friendliness. This has caused the amount of packaging waste in the world to increase rapidly, becoming one of the major dangers to the global environment. The potential hazard associated with this kind of waste and have been developing more innovative techniques to lessen its negative impacts. This study aims to convert food packaging wastes (FPWs) into raw materials (aluminum and carbon particles) using three combined methods: pyrolysis, mechanical and chemical treatment. This experiment used a furnace used in the laboratory to heat plastic packaging waste to obtain a solid fraction, under pre-set conditions, including temperatures of 500 °C, 600 °C, 700 °C, and 800 °C, and the retention time is 10 min, 20 min, 30 min. Specifically, the highest amount of solid fraction obtained was 20.9% at the condition of 500°C for 10 minutes, while the recovery rate was the lowest at 8.91% at the condition of 800 °C for 30 minutes. According to the references, the retention time condition of 30 minutes is the optimum for aluminum recovery, of which 800°C is the best with 8.11%, along with the ease of separation of aluminum fragments and aluminum particles out of the mixture. Finally, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis was used to confirm the composition of the solid obtained after the pyrolysis process, the selected wavelength ranged from 650-4000 cm−1. In summary, the experiment was successful when it found the optimal conditions for the pyrolysis method in recovering aluminum from packaging waste. In addition, the recovery of aluminum metal from this type of waste also contributes to solving the very high demand for this metal in recent times.