Production of combustible fuels and carbon nanotubes from plastic wastes using an in-situ catalytic microwave pyrolysis process

Abstract This study performed in-situ microwave pyrolysis of plastic waste into hydrogen, liquid fuel and carbon nanotubes in the presence of Zeolite Socony Mobil ZSM-5 catalyst. In the presented microwave pyrolysis of plastics, activated carbon was used as a heat susceptor. The microwave power of 1 kW was employed to decompose high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) wastes at moderate temperatures of 400–450 °C. The effect of plastic composition, catalyst loading and plastic type on liquid, gas and solid carbon products was quantified. This in-situ CMP reaction resulted in heavy hydrocarbons, hydrogen gas and carbon nanotubes as a solid residue. A relatively better hydrogen yield of 129.6 mmol/g as a green fuel was possible in this process. FTIR and gas chromatography analysis revealed that liquid product consisted of C 13+ fraction hydrocarbons, such as alkanes, alkanes, and aromatics. TEM micrographs showed tubular-like structural morphology of the solid residue, which was identified as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) during X-ray diffraction analysis. The outer diameter of CNTs ranged from 30 to 93 nm from HDPE, 25–93 nm from PP and 30–54 nm for HDPE-PP mixure. The presented CMP process took just 2–4 min to completely pyrolyze the plastic feedstock into valuable products, leaving no polymeric residue.