Alshareef, R., Sait-Stewart, R., Nahil, M.A. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Three-stage pyrolysis–steam reforming–water gas shift processing of household, commercial and industrial waste plastics for hydrogen production. Waste Disposal & Sustainable Energy, 6 (1). pp. 25-37. ISSN 2524-7980
Abstract
Five common single plastics and nine different household, commercial and industrial waste plastics were processed using a three-stage (i) pyrolysis, (ii) catalytic steam reforming and (iii) water gas shift reaction system to produce hydrogen. Pyrolysis of plastics produces a range of different hydrocarbon species which are subsequently catalytically steam reformed to produce H2 and CO and then undergo water gas shift reaction to produce further H2. The process mimics the commercial process for hydrogen production from natural gas. Processing of the single polyalkene plastics (high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), and polypropylene (PP)) produced similar H2 yields between 115 mmol and 120 mmol per gram plastic. Even though PS produced an aromatic product slate from the pyrolysis stage, further stages of reforming and water gas shift reaction produced a gas yield and composition similar to that of the polyalkene plastics (115 mmol H2 per gram plastic). PET gave significantly lower H2 yield (41 mmol per gram plastic) due to the formation of mainly CO, CO2 and organic acids from the pyrolysis stage which were not conducive to further reforming and water gas shift reaction. A mixture of the single plastics typical of that found in municipal solid waste produced a H2 yield of 102 mmol per gram plastic. Knowing the gas yields and composition from the single plastics enabled an estimation of the yields from a simulated waste plastic mixture and a ‘real-world’ waste plastic mixture to be determined. The different household, commercial and industrial waste plastic mixtures produced H2 yields between 70 mmol and 107 mmol per gram plastic. The H2 yield and gas composition from the single waste plastics gave an indication of the type of plastics in the mixed waste plastic samples.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Waste plastic, Hydrogen, Catalyst, Pyrolysis reforming, Water gas shift |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemical & Process Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Dec 2023 10:40 |
Last Modified: | 21 Mar 2024 16:55 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s42768-023-00173-z |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206514 |