Pyrolysis and combustion behavior study of PMMA waste from micro-scale to bench-scale experiments

With the increasing use of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), there is growing concern about its waste utilization. It is of great significance to study its pyrolysis and combustion behaviors, then a series of experiments were conducted from micro-scale (thermogravimetry, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry) to bench-scale (fire propagation apparatus and cone calorimeter). By the micro-scale experiments, the pyrolysis kinetic model was established and kinetic parameters were obtained by coupling the Shuffled Complex Evolution optimization algorithm. Moreover, based on the inferred pyrolysis gases and functional groups, the possible chemical reactions of PMMA pyrolysis from molecular structure were also put forward. By the bench-scale experiments, the pyrolysis and combustion behaviors were further studied by coupling the pyrolysis kinetics and mass/heat transfer process, including mass loss rate, heat release rate and CO2/CO production. The obtained pyrolysis and combustion characteristics by the multi-scale experiments would be helpful for the further energy utilization.