Abstract

The utility of plastics and engine oils is very important due to their wide application in the packaging and automotive industries respectively and as such their continued use has led to an in increase in plastics and oil waste. However, the huge amount of plastic and engine oil waste produced may be treated with thermal catalytic methods to produce fossil fuel substitutes. In this research, the co-processing of polyethylene resin with petrol engine oil into high value hydrocarbons using thermal catalytic cracking (consisting of initial pyrolytic stage followed by a catalytic reforming stage) was investigated. Plastic resins and petrol engine oil were loaded in the thermal reactor and HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst placed in the catalytic chamber. The system was purged with nitrogen at temperatures between 400 and 520oC. The resulting products were compared with those obtained in the absence of a catalyst. At temperatures greater than 460oC the conversion into liquid and gas fuels is above 70% wt. At similar temperatures and in the absence of catalyst, thermal cracking of low density polyethylene generated majorly liquid products with a low calorific value. The use of HZSM-5 as a catalyst caused a significant increase in the proportion of gaseous hydrocarbons that consisted mainly of light fraction olefins and liquid oil with calorific value of 43.9 MJ/kg and also comparable to regular petrol fuel. This study focuses on developing a method of conversion that can be adopted by industries as a means of converting waste plastics and waste oils into resources rather than waste.

Keywords:

HZSM-5, oils, plastics, thermal catalytic,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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