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Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application

The global pandemic response to COVID-19 has led to the generation of huge volumes of unrecyclable plastic waste from single use disposable face coverings. Rotary hearth furnaces can be used to recover Zn and Fe from non-recyclable steelmaking by-product dusts, and waste plastic material such as fac...

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Autores principales: Stewart, Daniel J. C., Fisher, Lucy V., Warwick, Michael E. A., Thomson, David, Barron, Andrew R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8854564/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35177739
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06691-w
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author Stewart, Daniel J. C.
Fisher, Lucy V.
Warwick, Michael E. A.
Thomson, David
Barron, Andrew R.
author_facet Stewart, Daniel J. C.
Fisher, Lucy V.
Warwick, Michael E. A.
Thomson, David
Barron, Andrew R.
author_sort Stewart, Daniel J. C.
collection PubMed
description The global pandemic response to COVID-19 has led to the generation of huge volumes of unrecyclable plastic waste from single use disposable face coverings. Rotary hearth furnaces can be used to recover Zn and Fe from non-recyclable steelmaking by-product dusts, and waste plastic material such as facemasks could be utilized as a supplementary reductant for the rotary hearth furnace (RHF), but their fibrous form makes milling and processing to appropriate sizing for RHF application extremely challenging. A scalable method of grinding facemasks to powder by melting and mixing with Welsh coal dust reported herein provides a solution to both environmental challenges. The melt-blended PPE/coal dust shows a dramatically improved CO(2) gasification reactivity (E(a) = 133–159 kJmol(−1)) when compared to the untreated coal (E(a) = 183–246 kJmol(−1)), because of improved pore development in the coal during the pyrolysis stage of heating and the catalytic activity of the CaO based ash present in the facemask plastic. The results are promising for the application of waste facemasks in recycling steelmaking by-product dusts in rotary hearth furnaces and may also be suitable for direct injection to the blast furnace subject to further study.
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spelling pubmed-88545642022-02-18 Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application Stewart, Daniel J. C. Fisher, Lucy V. Warwick, Michael E. A. Thomson, David Barron, Andrew R. Sci Rep Article The global pandemic response to COVID-19 has led to the generation of huge volumes of unrecyclable plastic waste from single use disposable face coverings. Rotary hearth furnaces can be used to recover Zn and Fe from non-recyclable steelmaking by-product dusts, and waste plastic material such as facemasks could be utilized as a supplementary reductant for the rotary hearth furnace (RHF), but their fibrous form makes milling and processing to appropriate sizing for RHF application extremely challenging. A scalable method of grinding facemasks to powder by melting and mixing with Welsh coal dust reported herein provides a solution to both environmental challenges. The melt-blended PPE/coal dust shows a dramatically improved CO(2) gasification reactivity (E(a) = 133–159 kJmol(−1)) when compared to the untreated coal (E(a) = 183–246 kJmol(−1)), because of improved pore development in the coal during the pyrolysis stage of heating and the catalytic activity of the CaO based ash present in the facemask plastic. The results are promising for the application of waste facemasks in recycling steelmaking by-product dusts in rotary hearth furnaces and may also be suitable for direct injection to the blast furnace subject to further study. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8854564/ /pubmed/35177739 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06691-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access 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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Stewart, Daniel J. C.
Fisher, Lucy V.
Warwick, Michael E. A.
Thomson, David
Barron, Andrew R.
Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title_full Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title_fullStr Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title_full_unstemmed Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title_short Facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste COVID-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
title_sort facemasks and ferrous metallurgy: improving gasification reactivity of low-volatile coals using waste covid-19 facemasks for ironmaking application
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8854564/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35177739
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06691-w
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