
Despite its amazing properties of strength, durability and its light weight, plastics have a major drawback: they can take up to 500-1000 years to naturally degrade. So if plastic had been discovered 500 years ago, and if Shakespeare used to brush his teeth, then his toothbrush would still be lying somewhere in England!
Some other issues with waste plastic are that it affects humans, animals
and marine life; it causes soil infertility where dumped; and only 8% of all
plastic waste is recycled! Sounds a trifle, right! Another lesser known factual
reality is that for the production of plastic, 7% of the global crude oil is
consumed, which is more than China's total crude oil consumption.
So what do we do with these ever-growing mounds of plastic waste?
Bury plastic underground? Burn it? Or launch it into space! These solutions are
more disastrous than the problem itself.
Pyrolysis
The Japanese inventor Akinori Ito popularized the
ingenious idea converting waste plastic back into fuel oil through plastic pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is a thermochemical decomposition of organic
material at elevated temperature without the participation of oxygen.
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Akinori Ito displaying his pyrolysis machine for home |
1. Shredding
Firstly, the waste material must be segregated and, if possible, be cleaned. Then it is shredded to speed up the reaction and to ensure that the reaction is complete.
2. Anaerobic heating
The shredded material must be heated in a controlled manner in an oxygen-free reactor. One of the most crucial factors in this operation is maintaining the right temperature(~430C for plastic) and the rate of heating, as they define the quality and the quantity of the final product.
3. Condensation
The gas that comes out from the reactor must be condensed by passing it through a condensation tube or by directly bubbling it in water.
4. Distillation
This mixture of oil that you obtain can be used as furnace oil but it isn't sufficiently pure for engines. If you want to use it as engine fuel, you need to extract and purify the desired products from the mixture through fractional distillation.
Some benefits of pyrolysis are that the process does not generate harmful pollutants and that the by-products can be used as fuel for running the plant. In the case of plastic, some of the valuable fuels and solvents that can be extracted through waste plastic pyrolysis are gasoline, kerosene, diesel, benzene, toluene and xylene. And a kilo of waste (typically PP) can yield upto a litre of fuel whereas the incineration of the same quantity of plastic would produce 3 kilos of CO2!
So through this process of pyrolysis, the bane of abhorrent plastic waste, can now become a boon and a source of abundant fuel. This will reduce plastic in landfills, reduce emissions and be a reliable alternative to the depleting fossil fuels. Don't trash your future. Act now!
1 comment:
It reduces the green house effects that might be detrimental to the environment around human race.
Plastic Pyrolysis Equipment
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