Day by day worldwide use of plastics is increasing because of their light weight and durable characteristics. Waste plastics are major environmental problems all over the world. Waste plastics are not biodegradable , it remains in the landfill for a long period of time causing vegetation and aquatic ecosystem dilemmas. Abandoned waste plastic thrown into the ocean causes friction of ocean waves and then broken down by sunlight into small pieces and takes the shape of plastic like soup. Aquatic organism mistakes the plastic soup as their food and can't digest, either they die or through food chain it affects human health. To avoid severe environmental degradation problems of waste plastics some countries and big cities banned or restricted the use of plastic products. The worldwide generation of waste plastics is approximately 280 million tons/year. All most all of these waste plastics are dumped either in land or ocean. City municipalities spend huge amount of money each year just to dispose of these waste plastics into landfill because most waste plastics are not recycled. When the waste plastics are subjected to incineration, they release harmful toxic gas into the environment causing severe pollution. These waste plastics gradually enhance the hazardous environmental problems. Generally plastics are made from crude oil, however crude oil is a very limited natural resource and non-renewable. Every year millions of barrels of crude oil are to produce the waste plastics and when plastics are discarded after use the energy source is lost. A new developed technology plan minimizes the environment pollution problems simultaneously boost up energy sector by renovating the waste plastics into high energy content fuel. The produced fuel is obtained using a unique thermal degradation of waste plastics and converting them into hydrocarbon fuel like materials. Preliminary tests proved that this fuel burns cleaner and the production cost is very low. Unique production setup demonstrated to produce 93% fuel from waste plastic in the pilot scale. The fuel produced has been tested and proven to work on majority types of internal combustion engines. This technology utilized can avoid waste plastic pollution problem worldwide by the implementation of newly developed technology. Through the utilization of the technology the use of reliable plastics won't need to be banned and serve as a very reliable alternate source of energy. The technology will also help reduce a significant amount of import oil from foreign countries and help provide a steady economy.
Heavy hydrocarbon fuel oil production was conducted only Polystyrene (PS) waste plastic and temperature range was used for this experiment 200-450 ºC and thermal degradation process utilized. Fractional colu mn temperature range was used for heavy fuel oil co llect ion 340-365 ºC. Polystyrene waste plastic was used only this experiment and experiment was performed without catalyst in the batch process under laboratory fume hood. Produced fuel was analysis by Gas Chro matography and Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS) and FT-IR. GC/M S analysis result indicates that produced fuel hydrocarbon chian range C 6 to C 25 and FT-IR analysis result provided produced fuel functional group band energy which is reflect with calorific value. It was stated that proper selection of the process parameter and make it possible to control and limited grade fuels production product distribution such as valuable hydrocarbon fuel oil and other grade fuels fraction. Basic analysis of heavy hydrocarbon fuel oil GC/MS and FT-IR results described in the result and discussion section. Produced fuel sulphur was determined by ASTM test method and sulphur content was less then environmental protection agency (EPA) level. Fuel could be used for feed stock refinery or heavy equipment because produce fuel has hydrocarbon range is C 6 to C 25 .
The demand for fossil fuel is at an all t ime h igh worldwide. Annually ~30 billion barrels of petroleu m is being consumed worldwide. In this busy society, transportation is vital and, for transportation, petroleum is an obligation. All the major forms of business, agricultural, exports and imports depend on transportation. Transportation requires petroleum to function. Vehicles in the road require fuels, airway transportation requires Aviation fuel and sea transportation requires fuel oil. Fo r not only transportation but also, petroleum is required to make all kind of daily usable plastics. Deplet ion of petroleum is inevitable at th is current rate of consumption. Emissions released fro m evaporation and co mbustion of these fuel contributes to too many environ mental and health problems; including emitting greenhouse gases that contribute immensely to global warming. Annually ~7 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released to the environment due to petroleum emission. Moreover, when the plastics are discarded into the landfill, it becomes waste plastic and since plastic is non-biodegradable, it can remain in the landfill fo r thousands of year. Waste plastics presence in the landfill causes environmental problems e.g., it can cause soil to decay. Alternative source of energy created fro m Solar, W ind, Hydrogen Fuel, Bio mass Fuel, Bio-Diesel, Green Diesel, Bio-ethanol, and Geo-therma l has been proposed as a solution to these problems. A developed process of thermally breaking down the hydrocarbon of chains of plastic has been studied and imp lemented to produce a liquid fuel in the presence of activated carbon. The activated carbon acts as a filter to absorb dye from the waste plastic during the thermal process to increase the quality of the final product. This fuel can be used for all kinds of transportation, and will emit much less emission compared to the current commercial fuel and it will be cost effective.
Thermal conversion process was applied with three types of waste plastic mixture and waste plastics mixture to liquid hydrocarbon fuel production in present of oxygen under laboratory Labconco fume hood without adding any kind of catalyst. Utilization of the process described can reduce the impact of waste plastics significantly. Thermal decomposition of the most common plastics such as high density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrenes (PS) has been conducted to produces a mixture of hydrocarbons. The thermal process applied of mixed waste plastics using a steel reactor at 25-430℃ has been investigated. The reactor was connected with standard condensation unit with water circulator system. Waste plastics are broken down into shorter chain hydrocarbon compounds from long chains during the thermal conversion process without adding catalyst or chemical. Produced fuel was analysis by using GC/MS, FT-IR and DSC and from GC/MS analysis result showed hydrocarbon chain range C 3 to C 28 into fuel and produce fuel can be use as feed stock refinery or power plant for electricity generation or can use for internal combustion engine.
Plastics are not easily biodegradable; and because of these characteristics they can remain under landfill and water for a very long period of time. All over the world only 6% of waste plastics are recycled and the rest of all waste plastics are dumped into landfills. An experiment was conducted in a laboratory scale batch process under Labconco's fume hood utilizing low density polyethylene (LDPE). The experiment was carried out to obtain a hydrocarbon fuel product utilizing thermal degradation. Many research studies have successfully demonstrated that waste plastics such as low density polyethylene (LDPE), high density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) can be converted to valuable liquid hydrocarbon fuels. For experimental purposes we used 500 gm of LDPE as raw materials. This particular experiment is a two step process; the first step process involves extracting hydrocarbon fuels as mixture of both short and long chain hydrocarbon compounds. During the second step the fuel obtained in the first process is refractionated by thermal degradation process utilizing a distillation column. This process yields a short hydrocarbon chain liquid fuel that has similar properties to gasoline grade fuels. Analysis of these fuels was conducted by Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS), FT-IR Spectrum 100 and Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC). The results show that the produced fuels are good quality fuels with high energy content. ASTM test result indicates that fuel has low sulfur level (3.2 ppm) and the fuel hydrocarbon range shown by GC/MS analysis is C 4 -C 10 .
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