Abstract
This study proposes a sustainable, eco-friendly process scheme for gasification-integrated carbon capture and utilization, aiming to convert seven different plastic wastes into an industrially important feedstock, syngas with H2/CO mole ratio ≥ 2. Also, the proposed process includes the heat recovery, steam generation, & power generation sections and the integrated scheme is designed to achieve the self-sustainability through effective heat integration together with the utilisation of part of syngas produced for meeting the overall plant’s steam, power, and heat requirements. A steady-state plant-wide model was developed and simulated using ASPEN Plus considering different waste plastics as feed including sachet water plastic waste (SWPW), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and mixed plastics. Sensitivity analysis performed for a plant capacity of 100 kg/hr plastic feed, revealed that a minimum steam-to-carbon ratio of 1.55 (except for PET) must be maintained within the gasifier to achieve complete carbon conversion. Results on comparative analysis indicated that SWPW and LDPE were highly suitable to produce syngas ratio of 2 exhibiting maximum net plant efficiencies of 69.49% and 68.99% respectively. The integrated plant has the potential to utilize approximately 10–20% of the CO2 produced while generating around 2 kg of syngas per kg of plastic waste (SWPW and LDPE) of which ~ 50% was used to meet the process energy requirement.
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The datasets generated in this study can be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Director, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, for providing a platform and facilities for carrying out the research. The authors also would like to acknowledge the financial support of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India RA Fellowship (Award No.: 31/0014(13248)/2022-EMR-I), Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) grant (Award No.: USISTEF/IG-STAGE-I/022/2022) and CSIR-CCUS Mission Grant (FBR 2.1).
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Koppala, B.C.N., Povari, S., Alam, S. et al. Comparative assessment on thermo-chemical conversion of different waste plastics to value added syngas: thermodynamic investigation. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04811-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04811-2