Abstract
Plastic has become one of the most commonly used materials, yet it is a major source of pollution of land and aquatic life. The pyrolysis process has been reported to be efficient in converting plastic waste into useful products. Kinetic modeling was used to examine the reaction type and develop an industrial-scale economical pyrolysis process. This work evaluated the pyrolysis kinetics of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) based on Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) results and a variety of possible kinetic models. Activation energies were estimated using the nth-order reaction model and estimated to be 68.7, 60.5, 56.6, 58.6, and 60.9 kJ mol− 1 for HDPE, LDPE, PS, PP, and PET, respectively. The proposed nth order kinetic model accurately described the process complexity and fitted the experimental TGA data.
Highlights
• Pyrolysis kinetics of plastics were evaluated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)
• nth order kinetics provided the best fit to data
• Pyrolysis activation energies followed the order HDPE > PET > LDPE > PP > PS
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Data Availability
The data are provided within the manuscript and Supplementary Materials.
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The authors would like to thank the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq for the support to achieve this study.
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Zahraa A. Hussein and Farooq Al-Sheikh wrote the main manuscript.Zaidoon M. Shakor and Mohammed Alzuhairi reviewed and revised the manuscript.
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Hussein, Z.A., Shakor, Z.M., Alzuhairi, M. et al. Kinetic and Thermodynamic Study of the Pyrolysis of Plastic Waste. Environ. Process. 10, 27 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-023-00640-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-023-00640-z