KINETIC STUDY OF HYDROCARBON LIQUID PRODUCTION VIA THERMAL AND CATALYTIC PYROLYSIS FOR LOW-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE

Chemical

Abstract

Pyrolysis process becomes an interesting technique to shrink the increasing amounts of the plastic waste. Iraqi kaolin clay has used as a catalyst for the pyrolysis of polyethylene plastic in order to produce the hydrocarbon liquid fuel. The pyrolysis process carried out for low-density polyethylene plastics in semi-batch open system reactor in a temperature range of 370 to 450°C.
Thermo-gravimetric analysis for the plastic presented the range of degradation was between 349 and 489 °C. The pyrolysis results show a remarkable increasing of the hydrocarbon liquid yield produced from the catalytic pyrolysis process by Iraqi kaolin compare with the thermal pyrolysis results. The kinetic study demonstrates that the pyrolysis temperature affected the catalytic production rate of hydrocarbon liquid more than the thermal process.
The characterization of the liquid hydrocarbon products by the Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy shows that alkanes were the main compounds in the produced hydrocarbon liquid while the x-ray diffraction indicated no sulphur in the produced hydrocarbon liquids. The ASTM distillation reported obvious increasing in the total light fractions (below 250 °C) for the catalytically pyrolysis reaction products