Biography
Biography: James F Costello
Abstract
The thermal recycling of waste plastics such as Tetra Pak is achieved via pyrolysis using a semi-pilot plant scale (≈100g) fluidised bed reactor. Resultant oils are sampled from the condensation streams, and chars are collected from the reactor, pre- and post-gas filters. The organic products are characterised using NMR, GC and GC-MS. Both organic and inorganic materials are analysed by ICP-OES and SEM-EDX in order to characterise the deposition of metals throughout the pyrolysis vapour stream. SEM is used to identify and characterise the different morphologies of materials retrieved from the sand bed reactor. It has been demonstrated that NMR is a useful tool for the rapid characterisation of the paraffin, olefin and aromatic functional group ratios for these potentiall valuable oils. Metal distribution is low amongst the oils, and those traces that are present are consistent with corrosion from the reaction vessel. In the case of laminated aluminium plastics such as Tetra Pak, very pure aluminium is deposited in the sand bed char and metal immobilisation throughout is again consistent with reactor corrosion. Indeed, the level of metal contamination found in the chars is such that they may be considered hazardous materials in terms of land fill disposal.