Converting Municipal Plastic Waste to Environmentally Friendly Fuel: A Process Simulation Study
Abstract
Only 9% of the total plastic is recycled, but a substantial amount cannot be recycled, and most plastic goes to landfills. In this thesis, a process simulation model is implemented in the Aspen Plus® simulator, and the technical sensitivity analysis and optimization analysis are conducted for the distillation unit of a commercial pyrolysis plant. The process simulation study was conducted for the actual plant capacity of 500 kg/hr of plastic waste under the temperature of 440°C and slight vacuum pressure of 0.998 atm to convert it into char, oil fuels, and non-condensable gases. Results show that the total oil fuel yield is 81.92% (heavy oil is 237.72 kg/hr and light oil is 171.90 kg/hr), whereas the non-condensable gases yield is 14.85%. The char yield is reduced to 3.22% due to the use of a secondary reactor that further pyrolyzes the char received from the primary reactors.