Study on Utilization of Non-recycled Plastic Waste into Liquid Fuel Using Torre-Pyrolysis Process

• Main Author: Gunawan, Arianto
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/39545
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Non-recycled plastic waste, which consists of colored plastic packaging and laminated aluminum plastic is counted as the second largest from the total waste mass dumped into Greater Bandung city landfill. One of the methods to solve that problem is by using pyrolysis process, in order to convert the plastic waste into liquid fuel. However, pyrolysis of plastic waste will not work properly because plastic is mixed with organic material and having low bulk density; therefore, a pre-treatment process is required. Wet torrefaction is a treatment using hot water as the medium to separate plastic and increase its bulk density, so it can be effectively processed by pyrolysis afterwards. The combination of wet torrefaction and pyrolysis is called torre-pyrolysis. Wet torrefaction experiment was conducted at the temperature range of 150–225°C to produce high bulk density plastic. Pyrolysis was conducted at the temperature range of 450–500°C, producing oil from both wet torrefied plastic (HT) and untreated plastic (RAW). Their characteristics and heating value were then measured in order to determine the optimum parameter process. The experiment results showed that wet torrefaction of 250 g mixed waste at 200°C, resulted in an increase of plastic bulk density from 9.4 to 207.7 kg/m3 and required 2.8 MJ of process energy. Pyrolysis of 200 g RAW plastic waste at 500°C required 5 MJ of process energy and yielded 38% pyrolytic oil with an oil energy yield of 3.4 MJ and the characteristics similar to that of kerosene. Pyrolysis of 200 g HT plastic waste at 500°C produced less pyrolytic oil; however, when the process was conducted in full reactor capacity condition, plastic mass input can be increased by 50% so that the oil energy yield increased to 4.5 MJ. These results proved that torre-pyrolysis is able to solve the problem of non-recycled plastic by producing useful liquid fuel.