T his research studies the effect of operating temperature and particle size on the yield of liquid products fr om the pyrolysis process of expanded polystyrene (EPS) waste. For the experiment, the EPS samples were collected, washed and crush e d, likewise a pretreatment was carried out in which the residues wer e heated at 150 °C for 10 min to reduce their volume, preserving the initial mass. T he pretreated sample was ground and sieved into t wo different particle sizes (0-5 and 5-10 mm). For the experiments, a horizontal tubular reactor was used, which operated at a pressure of 34.66 kPa for 3 hours and at a heating rate of 10 ºC/min. Pyrolysis was carried out at temperatures of 400, 450, 500 and 550°C, varying with the two particle sizes indicated above. It was determined that the operating temperature and particle size have a direct effect on the performance of liquid products. Likewise, the operating conditions that maximize the yield of liquid products were the temperature of 550 °C and the particle size of 5-10 mm, obtaining a yield of liquid products of 97.8%, gaseous products of 1.2% an d solid products of 1.0%.
Shale oil is an alternative energy resource for oil production and can be obtained from the pyrolysis of oil shale. In Peru, a deposit has been in the Lancones basin that has geological and geochemical characteristics that indicate the possible existence of oil shale. A pyrolysis plant for oil shale in the Lancones basin-Peru was designed and simulated, the pyrolysis kinetics was determined by applying the KAS isoconversional method, three reaction zones were identified and was obtained for the conversion range [0.05,0.20] 𝑬 𝒂 of 97.7 kJ/mol and an 𝑨 𝒂 equal to 1.64E+04 min-1, with an f(α) of the D3 type; for the conversion range <0.20,0.50] an 𝑬 𝒂 of 158.8 kJ/mol and an 𝑨 𝒂 equal to 7.63E+07 min-1 with an f(α) of type D1 and for the conversion range <0.50,0.95] an 𝑬 𝒂 of 163.8 kJ/mol and an 𝑨 𝒂 equal to 4.87E+07 min-1, with an f(α) of type R2. The pyrolysis plant comprises three stages: drying, pyrolysis and condensation. For a load of 375 t/h of oil shale and a period of 4 hours, a conversion of 90% of the organic material was obtained with a production of 3 t/h (611.8 bbl/d) of shale oil. This production is greater than the production of oil fields II and IX located in the same basin.
Natural gas is an energy source less contaminant than oil or coal and it is transported through pipes or as liquefied natural gas (LNG). PERU LNG directs the first LNG plant in South America, which has a capacity of 4.45MTPA and uses the technology C3MR for the liquefaction. This technology employs a refrigerant mixture formed by ethylene and other light compounds due to the ethane/methane ratio in the feed is not enough to make a refrigerant that achieve a good performance of the process. However, ethane molar composition is highly enough for a correct separation and its use as pure component preparing the mixed refrigerant could generate a significant reduction in power consumption. The present work has as objective to determinate the mixed refrigerant composition (with no ethylene) that minimizes the power consumption of liquefaction process. To meet that goal, this work models the liquefaction process using a spreadsheet to estimate the thermodynamics properties and the software MATLAB to solve the optimization of refrigerant composition with the genetic algorithm. Finally, the energy consumption of the process was reduced in 26.9MW, that is equivalent to 15.5% respect to the ba se case, without modifying the initial operational conditions.
A multiple regression analysis was performed to automatically fit a model for optimizing the performance of liquid fuels obtained from the pyrolysis of high-density polyethylene (HDPE). The test version of the "Minitab 17" software was used, being the objective value, the yield of liquid products, and as variables, the pyrolysis operation temperature and the particle size of the sample. From the model, it was found that the operating conditions that maximize the performance of liquid fuels are a pyrolysis operating temperature of 557.8 °C and a particle size of 3 cm. It was possible to determine that the liquid products obtained contained fractions of 18% gasoline cut, 32% Naphtha/Kerosene, 28% diesel cut, and 22% residual. Likewise, a chemical composition analysis was carried out in which it was determined that the liquid products contained hydrocarbons, aromatics, halogenated, sulfur, and oxygenated components.
Population growth has brought with it pollution problems caused by plastic waste and the use of fossil fuels. Pyrolysis is a thermal degradation technology that finds a solution to these two major problems by transforming plastic waste into synthetic oil. In this research, a simulation of a pyrolysis plant that processes 60 tons per day of the three most common plastic waste (polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene) in Peru to obtain synthetic oil is carried out. The product is compared with a commercial WTI oil and a diesel fuel to validate its properties. An economic analysis is carried out to obtain the net present value (NPV) of the project for a horizon of 10 years. From the results of the simulation, a production of 12 thousand barrels per month of synthetic oil was obtained with a liquid product yield of 81.6%, and with 50.6 °API. This result shows that synthetic oil is lighter than a commercial oil but does not have the properties of a diesel fuel to be marketed without first undergoing an additional refining process. Finally, in the economic analysis, a NPV of $18.8 million dollars, an internal rate of return (IRR) of 80% and a project investment recovery period of 1.3 years were obtained.
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