Analytical representations of experimental polyethylene pyrolysis yields

摘要

Pyrolysis of plastic waste could convert this rapidly accumulating material into valuable hydrocarbons to be used either as fuels or as raw materials in the petrochemical industry. Unfortunately, the absence of a predictive applied science of pyrolysis is an obstacle to the development of practical methods of conversion. In an attempt to overcome this problem the application of an analytical semi-empirical model (ASEM) of pyrolysis to hydrocarbon plastics has been examined. The ASEM was developed by the Clean Combustion Technology Laboratory (CCTL) at the University of Florida, for organizing experimental data on pyrolysis products of coal, biomass and alternative fuels (CBAF). This model has been tested and adapted using experimental data for pyrolysis yields of polyethylene (PE) reported by the University of Zaragoza in Spain. The absence of oxygen in the PE feedstock minimizes the functional groups represented in the products and greatly simplifies the analysis. We find that similar regularities of PE product yields emerge from this effort as in CBAF cases. The results suggest that the analytical methodology should be useful for organizing pyrolysis yields of other hydrocarbons. Furthermore, the simplifications suggest that further hydrocarbon experimental data would be helpful in the development of improved and more general models of solid feedstock pyrolysis for many thermo-chemical engineering applications.