Liquefaction of Waste Plastic into Fuel Oil

A liquefaction process to convert waste plastic into fuel oil was studied over three commercial catalysts namely zeolite Y, Silica Alumina (SA) and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) catalyst. A catalytic cracking process in which waste plastic were melted and cracked into smaller molecular weight hydrocarbons and at very high temperature, the resulting gas was cooled by condensation and resulting fuel oil was recovered. More specifically the effect of different catalysts on liquid yield was studied. The degradation of waste plastic especially high-density polyethylene was studied in a semi-batch reactor. The best results were obtained when FCC catalyst was used.