Olefins and Ethanol from Polyolefins: Analysis of Potential Chemical Recycling of Poly(ethylene) Mexican Case
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A. Vargas Santillán
Abstract
Plastic solid waste (PSW) presents challenges and opportunities to society regardless of their sustainability awareness and technological advances. A special emphasis is paid on waste generated from polyolefin sources, which makes up a great percentage of our daily commodities’ plastic products. In Mexico 7.6 millions of tons of plastic in 2012 were wasted, which low density polyethylene LDPE, and high density polyethylene HDPE were the most abundant. Increasing cost, and decreasing space of landfills are forcing considerations of alternative options for PSW disposal. Years of research, study and testing have resulted in a number of treatment, recycling and recovery methods for plastics that can be economically, and environmentally viable. The following work studies the possibilities of polyethylene recycling. Nowadays, non-catalytic thermal cracking (Pyrolysis) is receiving renewed attention, due to the fact of added value on a crude oil barrel and its very valuable yielded products, but a fact remains that advanced thermo-chemical recycling of polyolefin still lacks the proper design, and kinetic background to target certain desired products and/or chemicals. On the other hand some research have shown a good performance that can be used in a real plant. ASPEN Plus is used to simulate a non-catalytic thermal cracking process. The process behavior of simulation is similar to the experimental data from other authors. Using gibbs free energy to identify the chemical equilibrium in system, its global minimization allows identifying the amount of substances present in the process. The simulation results demonstrate that it could be produced 49 % and 34 % wt of ethylene and propylene respectively from gas yield at 850 °C. Then scale the plant to produce ethylene and propylene from the pyrolysis and ethanol from a direct hydration of ethylene. Aspen Process Economics Analyzer is used in order to find the feasibility of the pyrolysis and ethanol production. The total sales/total production cost ratio obtained for the integrated process approaches was 2.55.
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©2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Preface to the Special Issue dedicated to the First International Energy Conference, IEC 2015
- Derivation of an Upscaled Model for Mass Transfer and Reaction for Non-Food Starch Conversion to Bioethanol
- Elucidating Kinetic, Adsorption and Partitioning Phenomena from a Single Well Tracer Method: Laboratory and Bench Scale Studies
- Thermodynamic Analysis of Ethanol Synthesis from Glycerol by Two-Step Reactor Sequence
- Modeling the Transient VOC (toluene) Oxidation in a Packed-Bed Catalytic Reactor
- Substrate Feeding Strategy Integrated with a Biomass Bayesian Estimator for a Biotechnological Process
- Comparison Tools for Parametric Identification of Kinetic Model for Ethanol Production using Evolutionary Optimization Approach
- Hydrodeoxygenation of Phenol Over Sulfided CoMo Catalysts Supported on a Mixed Al2O3-TiO2 Oxide
- Experimental and Computational Analysis of Single Phase Flow Coiled Flow Inverter Focusing on Number of Transfer Units and Effectiveness
- Dynamic Effectiveness Factor for Catalytic Particles with Anomalous Diffusion
- Experimental and Artificial Neural Network Modeling of a Upflow Anaerobic Contactor (UAC) for Biogas Production from Vinasse
- Novel Feedback Control to Improve Biohydrogen Production by Desulfovibrio alaskensis
- Influence of an Alkaline Zeolite on the Carbon Flow in Anaerobiosis of Three Strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- CCS, A Needed Technology for the Mexican Electrical Sector: Sustainability and Local Industry Participation
- Olefins and Ethanol from Polyolefins: Analysis of Potential Chemical Recycling of Poly(ethylene) Mexican Case
- CFD Simulations of Copper-Ceria Based Microreactor for COPROX
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Preface to the Special Issue dedicated to the First International Energy Conference, IEC 2015
- Derivation of an Upscaled Model for Mass Transfer and Reaction for Non-Food Starch Conversion to Bioethanol
- Elucidating Kinetic, Adsorption and Partitioning Phenomena from a Single Well Tracer Method: Laboratory and Bench Scale Studies
- Thermodynamic Analysis of Ethanol Synthesis from Glycerol by Two-Step Reactor Sequence
- Modeling the Transient VOC (toluene) Oxidation in a Packed-Bed Catalytic Reactor
- Substrate Feeding Strategy Integrated with a Biomass Bayesian Estimator for a Biotechnological Process
- Comparison Tools for Parametric Identification of Kinetic Model for Ethanol Production using Evolutionary Optimization Approach
- Hydrodeoxygenation of Phenol Over Sulfided CoMo Catalysts Supported on a Mixed Al2O3-TiO2 Oxide
- Experimental and Computational Analysis of Single Phase Flow Coiled Flow Inverter Focusing on Number of Transfer Units and Effectiveness
- Dynamic Effectiveness Factor for Catalytic Particles with Anomalous Diffusion
- Experimental and Artificial Neural Network Modeling of a Upflow Anaerobic Contactor (UAC) for Biogas Production from Vinasse
- Novel Feedback Control to Improve Biohydrogen Production by Desulfovibrio alaskensis
- Influence of an Alkaline Zeolite on the Carbon Flow in Anaerobiosis of Three Strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- CCS, A Needed Technology for the Mexican Electrical Sector: Sustainability and Local Industry Participation
- Olefins and Ethanol from Polyolefins: Analysis of Potential Chemical Recycling of Poly(ethylene) Mexican Case
- CFD Simulations of Copper-Ceria Based Microreactor for COPROX
