Progress of Cryogenics and Isotopes Separation , ISSN: 1582-2575
2011, Volume 14, Issue 2

Plastic Wastes Recycling Using Modified ZMS-5A Zeolite

Abstract

The huge amount of plastic waste that resulted from the dramatic increase in polymer production gives rise to serious environmental concerns, as plastic does not degrade and remains in the municipal refuse tips for decade. According to a nation wide  survey conducted shows that thousands of tonnes of plastic waste is generated daily in our country, and only 30 wt% of the same is recycled, balance 70 wt% is not possible to dispose off. Plastic waste being more voluminous than organic waste takes up a lot of landfill space that is becoming a scare and expensive. The only sustainable solution is degradation of polymer into various smaller molecular weight fragments. Catalytic degradation of plastic waste offers considerable benefits as compared to thermal degradation and other methods used. Catalytic degradation occurs at considerably low temperature and forms hydrocarbons in the range of motor range fuel. In such degradation process, the most valuable fuel is obviously liquid fuel. Although gaseous products are useful too, as their burning can contribute to the energy demand of an endothermic polymer cracking process, excess gas production is not desirable.

This process involves catalytic degradation of waste plastic into fuel range hydrocarbon. A catalytic cracking process in which waste plastic were melted and cracked in the absence of oxygen and at  high temperature, the resulting gases were cooled by condensation and resulting crude oil was recovered. Noncondensable fraction contains hydrogen from where this can be separated and recovered. From crude oil various products petrol, diesel and kerosene etc. can be obtained by distillation. This process mainly consists of four units (1) reacting vessel or reaction chamber (2) condensation unit (3) receiving unit (4) distillation unit. More specifically the degradation of waste plastic except polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) over two  grade cracking catalysts, containing 2% and 8