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Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?

Plastics are engineering marvels that have found widespread use in all aspects of modern life. However, poor waste management practices and inefficient recycling technologies, along with their extremely high durability, have caused one of the major environmental problems facing humankind: waste plas...

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Autores principales: Erkmen, Berrak, Ozdogan, Adem, Ezdesir, Ayhan, Celik, Gokhan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9961285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36850143
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15040859
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author Erkmen, Berrak
Ozdogan, Adem
Ezdesir, Ayhan
Celik, Gokhan
author_facet Erkmen, Berrak
Ozdogan, Adem
Ezdesir, Ayhan
Celik, Gokhan
author_sort Erkmen, Berrak
collection PubMed
description Plastics are engineering marvels that have found widespread use in all aspects of modern life. However, poor waste management practices and inefficient recycling technologies, along with their extremely high durability, have caused one of the major environmental problems facing humankind: waste plastic pollution. The upcycling of waste plastics to chemical feedstock to produce virgin plastics has emerged as a viable option to mitigate the adverse effects of plastic pollution and close the gap in the circular economy of plastics. Pyrolysis is considered a chemical recycling technology to upcycle waste plastics. Yet, whether pyrolysis as a stand-alone technology can achieve true circularity or not requires further investigation. In this study, we analyzed and critically evaluated whether oil obtained from the non-catalytic pyrolysis of virgin polypropylene (PP) can be used as a feedstock for naphtha crackers to produce olefins, and subsequently polyolefins, without undermining the circular economy and resource efficiency. Two different pyrolysis oils were obtained from a pyrolysis plant and compared with light and heavy naphtha by a combination of physical and chromatographic methods, in accordance with established standards. The results demonstrate that pyrolysis oil consists of mostly cyclic olefins with a bromine number of 85 to 304, whereas light naphtha consists of mostly paraffinic hydrocarbons with a very low olefinic content and a bromine number around 1. Owing to the compositional differences, pyrolysis oil studied herein is completely different than naphtha in terms of hydrocarbon composition and cannot be used as a feedstock for commercial naphtha crackers to produce olefins. The findings are of particular importance to evaluating different chemical recycling opportunities with respect to true circularity and may serve as a benchmark to determine whether liquids obtained from different polyolefin recycling technologies are compatible with existing industrial steam crackers’ feedstock.
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spelling pubmed-99612852023-02-26 Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins? Erkmen, Berrak Ozdogan, Adem Ezdesir, Ayhan Celik, Gokhan Polymers (Basel) Article Plastics are engineering marvels that have found widespread use in all aspects of modern life. However, poor waste management practices and inefficient recycling technologies, along with their extremely high durability, have caused one of the major environmental problems facing humankind: waste plastic pollution. The upcycling of waste plastics to chemical feedstock to produce virgin plastics has emerged as a viable option to mitigate the adverse effects of plastic pollution and close the gap in the circular economy of plastics. Pyrolysis is considered a chemical recycling technology to upcycle waste plastics. Yet, whether pyrolysis as a stand-alone technology can achieve true circularity or not requires further investigation. In this study, we analyzed and critically evaluated whether oil obtained from the non-catalytic pyrolysis of virgin polypropylene (PP) can be used as a feedstock for naphtha crackers to produce olefins, and subsequently polyolefins, without undermining the circular economy and resource efficiency. Two different pyrolysis oils were obtained from a pyrolysis plant and compared with light and heavy naphtha by a combination of physical and chromatographic methods, in accordance with established standards. The results demonstrate that pyrolysis oil consists of mostly cyclic olefins with a bromine number of 85 to 304, whereas light naphtha consists of mostly paraffinic hydrocarbons with a very low olefinic content and a bromine number around 1. Owing to the compositional differences, pyrolysis oil studied herein is completely different than naphtha in terms of hydrocarbon composition and cannot be used as a feedstock for commercial naphtha crackers to produce olefins. The findings are of particular importance to evaluating different chemical recycling opportunities with respect to true circularity and may serve as a benchmark to determine whether liquids obtained from different polyolefin recycling technologies are compatible with existing industrial steam crackers’ feedstock. MDPI 2023-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9961285/ /pubmed/36850143 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15040859 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Erkmen, Berrak
Ozdogan, Adem
Ezdesir, Ayhan
Celik, Gokhan
Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title_full Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title_fullStr Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title_full_unstemmed Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title_short Can Pyrolysis Oil Be Used as a Feedstock to Close the Gap in the Circular Economy of Polyolefins?
title_sort can pyrolysis oil be used as a feedstock to close the gap in the circular economy of polyolefins?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9961285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36850143
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15040859
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