New thermochemical method turns plastic bag waste into fuel

Greetings friends.

As we know every year a large amount of plastic waste is produced, this waste has a very long life cycle and in many cases has only one use, especially plastic bags used for shopping are a big problem, most of them are discarded immediately after use.

Typical market plastic bags. Source: pixabay.com.

A large percentage of these bags end up in landfills, or worse, they are easily transported by the wind to the oceans causing major pollution problems, since many marine species, such as turtles, mistake them for food, or by the action of the sun and the wind they are fragmented into small pieces called microplastics, which are also ingested by fish and other smaller species, accumulating in this ecosystem.

I have always thought that the problem with plastic is that it is more viable to produce it from virgin raw material than to recycle it, and although efforts have been made to develop economical methods of use, the truth is that they have been little adopted due to the poor characteristics of the products obtained. So one way to solve the problem could be to find a better use for this type of waste, a use that provides them with greater added value.

Tons of bags and plastic waste end up polluting the oceans. Source: pixahive.

In this regard, a group of researchers recently reported in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, having developed a catalytic pyrolysis method to convert these plastic wastes into a fuel source through catalytic pyrolysis.

This group of researchers did not focus on recycling the plastic into feedstock to obtain the same material, rather they focused on upgrading it and converting it into steam through heat, then, when put in contact with a catalyst it is converted into fuel or another chemical product of higher value.

General scheme of the process. Image elaborated in Powerpoint.

The catalyst was obtained by impregnating zeolite with an aqueous solution of nickel and tungsten. After drying in an oven at 500 °C, the catalyst obtained was used in a pyrolysis reactor operating at 360 °C to decompose a mixture composed of common plastic bags used in supermarkets.

The product obtained from the pyrolysis was characterized by gas chromatography, an analytical method that separates and analyzes the compounds in a mixture by vaporizing them, and the scientists determined that it has characteristics similar to those of diesel fuel.

The scientists explain that the novelty of this catalyst is that it allows them to perform the cracking of plastic waste at moderate temperatures and in a single step, and that the method could also be adjusted for the treatment of other organic solid waste and obtain products of greater value.

The team leading this research will now focus on understanding the chemical mechanism occurring on the surface of the catalyst and optimizing the method to produce diesel from different plastic wastes.

This is a great contribution, which although it produces a type of fuel that also generates pollution problems, it is offering a way to give greater added value to plastic waste, especially market bags, which currently end up accumulating in public areas or reach our oceans becoming a terrible threat to marine wildlife, perhaps in the future this type of methods will open the doors to obtain other valuable chemicals from these wastes.

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Thanks for coming by to read friends, I hope you liked the information. See you next time.

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