Waste plastic bags converted to fuel

29-Jan-14

Indian researchers have developed an innovative method to re-use waste plastic bags by transforming them into fuel to power car engines with a relatively low-temperature process. Chemist Achyut Kumar Panda of Centurion University of Technology and Management Odisha is working with chemical engineer Raghubansh Kumar Singh of the National Institute of Technology, Odisha, to develop a commercially viable technology for efficiently rendering LDPE into a liquid fuel. In the recycling process, plastic waste is heated to 750 to 900 degrees F over a kaolin catalyst, causing the plastic's long chain polymer chains to break apart in a process known as thermo-catalytic degradation. This releases large quantities of much smaller, carbon-rich molecules like paraffins and olefins, yielding a liquid fuel very similar chemically to conventional petrochemical fuels, the researchers said. Every pound of waste plastic can produce about 10 ounces of liquid fuel in the process.