May 23 2005
The Research Institute for Environmental Management Technology (RIEMT) of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, has developed direct gasification technology to obtain fuel gas derived from waste plastics.
Although many oil-production processes were developed over three decades, there are still technical and economic obstacles for a recycling process of waste plastics.
This development project of the small-scale module for waste-plastics conversion will provide an innovative method to promote the more economical way of feedstock recycling affording energy resources and chemicals.
Based on the process design by PDL, an experimental module with a horizontally placed moving-bed reactor for plastics decomposition (Fig. 1) was assembled and operated to examine optimum conditions for the effective formation of gaseous hydrocarbons. A mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons like methane and isobutane were obtained from polyethylene and polypropylene with 70 to 94 wt%. The effective gasification was achieved by the important features of this gasification module such as the steady heat transfer using a screw conveyor and sand mixing with plastics.
The mixed gas here obtained has the much higher economical value than heavy-oil substitutes, the major product by the conventional process of feedstock recycling, and many applications are expected in the various scenes of the living life and business. For example, fuel gas can be applied to feed a small cogeneration generation with a gas engine in the factories of plastics industry suffering from plastics wastes.
The researchers in this project have the next plan of constructing a demonstration plant and other new-type reactor for the precise control of the gas compositions.
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