Pyrolysis Kinetics of Expanded Polystyrene and Polystyrene Wastes

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, P. O. Box 14115-143, Tehran, Iran

2 Faculty of Petrochemicals, Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute, P. O. Box 14975-112, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Hypothesis: The increasing production of non-degradable polymer wastes such as polystyrene (PS) and expandable polystyrene (EPS) is known as one of the most important environmental issues. Pyrolysis is one of the strategic and suitable methods for recycling of non-degradable polymeric wastes to fuels and useful chemicals. Therefore, investigation of pyrolysis kinetic of polystyrene waste, especially for available materials in Iran, is an essential issue for their use in industries. Obtaining the polystyrene pyrolysis kinetic can be used in designing industrial reactors and where it has economic credibility, styrene monomers can be produced in an industrial scale from polystyrene wastes.
Methods: Polystyrene (PS) and expandable polystyrene (EPS) samples that are available in Iran were collected, and their TGA analysis was performed in a nitrogen atmosphere in the temperature range of 25 to 600oC, at heating rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20 C/min, and sample mass changes were measured. The activation energy of pyrolysis was estimated by the Coats Redfern (CR), Ozawa Flynn Wall (OFW), Kissinger Akahira Sunose (KAS), Augis Bennetis (AB) and Vyazovkin methods.
Findings: The Vyazovkin model can predict the experimental data better than the other models, and therefore this model was used to estimate the activation energy. The activation energies of PS and EPS were calculated in the range of 158-201 kJ/mole and 182-195 kJ/mole, respectively. Furthermore, the pre-exponential factors of PS and EPS were estimated by Vyazovkin approach as 3.08×1012 and 1.05×1015, respectively. The results of kinetic analysis of polystyrene (PS) and expandable polystyrene (EPS) pyrolysis of samples in Iran can help simulate waste recycling processes and consequently reduce the environmental problems.

Keywords

References

  1. Maharana T., Negi Y.S., and Mohanty B., Review Article: Recycling of Polystyrene, Plast. Technol. Eng., 46, 729-736, 2007.
  2. Raps D., Hossieny N., Park C.B., and Altstädt V., Past and Present Developments in Polymer Bead Foams and Bead Foaming Technology, Polymer, 56, 5-19, 2015.
  3. Petrella A., Di Mundo R., and Notarnicola M., Recycled Expanded Polystyrene as Lightweight Aggregate for Environmentally Sustainable Cement Conglomerates, Materials, 13, 2020.
  4. Nisar J., Ali G., Shah A., Iqbal M., Khan R.A., Sirajuddin J., Anwar F., Ullah R., and Akhter M.S., Fuel Production from Waste Polystyrene via Pyrolysis: Kinetics and Products Distribution, Waste Manag., 88, 236-247, 2019.
  5. Kumar A., Dash S.K., Ahamed M.S., and Lingfa P., Study on Conversion Techniques of Alternative Fuels from Waste Plastics, Ghosh S.K. (Ed.) Energy Recovery Processes from Wastes, Springer Singapore, Singapore, 213-224, 2020.
  6. Maafa I.M., Pyrolysis of Polystyrene Waste: A Review, Polymers, 13, 225, 2021.
  7. Ohta M., Oshima S., Osawa N., Iwasa T., and Nakamura T., Formation of PCDDs and PCDFs during the Combustion of Polyvinylidene Chloride and Other Polymers in the Presence of HCl, Chemosphere, 54, 1521-1531, 2004.
  8. Murata K., Hirano Y., Sakata Y., and Uddin M.A., Basic Study on a Continuous Flow Reactor for Thermal Degradation of Polymers, Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis, 65, 71-90, 2002.
  9. Karagöz S., Karayildirim T., Uçar S., Yuksel M., and Yanik J., Liquefaction of Municipal Waste Plastics in VGO over Acidic and Non-acidic Catalysts, Fuel, 82, 415-423, 2003.
  10. Ojha D.K. and Vinu R., Resource Recovery via Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis of Polystyrene Using Zeolites, Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis., 113, 349-359, 2015.
  11. Marczewski M., Kamińska E., Marczewska H., Godek M., Rokicki G., and Sokołowski J., Catalytic Decomposition of Polystyrene. The Role of Acid and Basic Active Centers, Catal. B, 129, 236-246, 2013.
  12. Kannan P., Biernacki J.J., and Visco D.P., A Review of Physical and Kinetic Models of Thermal Degradation of Expanded Polystyrene Foam and Their Application to the Lost Foam Casting Process, Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis, 78, 162-171, 2007.
  13. Hurley M.J., Gottuk D.T., Hall (Jr) J.R., Harada K., Kuligowski E.D., Puchovsky M., Watts (Jr) J.M., and Wieczorek C.J., SFPE Handbook Fire Protection Engineering, Springer, Chapt. 4, 2015.
  14. Šimon P., Isoconversional Methods, Therm. Anal. Calorim., 76, 123, 2004.
  15. Zhang Z., Wang C., Huang G., Liu H., Yang S., and Zhang A., Thermal Degradation Behaviors and Reaction Mechanism of Carbon Fibre-Epoxy Composite from Hydrogen Tank by TG-FTIR, Hazard. Mater., 357, 73-80, 2018.
  16. Yang L., Pang Q., He Z., Xu T., Yang S., and Wang Y., Nonisothermal Thermogravimetric Kinetic Investigations on Combustion Behaviors of Concomitant Biomass from Urban Plants, Energy Fuels, 33, 12527-12537, 2019.
  17. Amer M., Nour M., Ahmed M., El-Sharkawy I., Ookawara S., Nada S., and Elwardany A., Kinetics and Physical Analyses for Pyrolyzed Egyptian Agricultural and Woody Biomasses: Effect of Microwave Drying, Biomass Convers. Biorefin., 11 , 2855-2868, 2021.
  18. Vyazovkin S., Burnham A.K., Criado J.M., Pérez-Maqueda L.A., Popescu C., and Sbirrazzuoli N., ICTAC Kinetics Committee Recommendations for Performing Kinetic Computations on Thermal Analysis Data, Thermochim. Acta, 520, 1-19, 2011.
  19. Aboulkas A., El Harfi K., and El Bouadili A., Thermal Degradation Behaviors of Polyethylene and Polypropylene. Part I: Pyrolysis Kinetics and Mechanisms, Energy Convers. Manag., 51, 1363-1369, 2010.
  20. Khawam A. and Flanagan D.R., Complementary Use of Model-Free and Modelistic Methods in the Analysis of Solid-State Kinetics, Phys. Chem. B, 109, 10073-10080, 2005.
  21. Opfermann J.R., Kaisersberger E., and Flammersheim H.J., Model-Free Analysis of Thermoanalytical Data-Advantages and Limitations, Acta, 391, 119-127, 2002.
  22. Zhou D., Schmitt E.A., Zhang G.G., Law D., Vyazovkin S., Wight C.A., Grant D.J.W., Crystallization Kinetics of Amorphous Nifedipine Studied by Model-Fitting and Model-Free Approaches, Pharm. Sci., 92, 1779-1792, 2003.
  23. Mahmood H., Shakeel A., Abdullah A., Khan M.I., and Moniruzzaman M., A Comparative Study on Suitability of Model-Free and Model-Fitting Kinetic Methods to Non-isothermal Degradation of Lignocellulosic Materials, Polymers, 13, 2504, 2021.
  24. Peterson J.D., Vyazovkin S., and Wight C.A., Kinetics of the Thermal and Thermo-Oxidative Degradation of Polystyrene, Polyethylene and Poly(propylene), Chem. Phys., 202, 775-784, 2001.
  25. Kwak H., Shin H.Y., Bae S.Y., Kumazawa H., Characteristics and Kinetics of Degradation of Polystyrene in Supercritical Water, Appl. Polym. Sci., 101, 695-700, 2006.
  26. Singh K.K.K. and Singh S.P., Kinetic Model and Analysis for Pyrolysis of Waste Polystyrene Over Laumontite, J. Eng. Res., 02, 2013.
  27. Moghaddam M.R.A., Styrene Monomer Recovering from Thermal Degradation of Polystyrene, J. Polym. Sci. Technol. (Persian), 20, 73-78, 2007.
  28. Menczel J.D. and Prime R.B., Thermal Analysis of Polymers: Fundamentals and Applications, John Wiley and Sons, Chapt. 3, 2009.
  29. Drozin D., Sozykin S., Ivanova N., Olenchikova T., Krupnova T., Krupina N., and Avdin V., Kinetic Calculation: Software Tool for Determining the Kinetic Parameters of the Thermal Decomposition Process Using the Vyazovkin Method, Software X, 11, 100359, 2020.
  30. Yang R.T. and Steinberg M., Differential Thermal Analysis and Reaction Kinetics for nth-Order Reaction, Chem., 49, 998-1001, 1977.
  31. Coats A.W. and Redfern J.P., Kinetic Parameters from Thermogravimetric Data, Nature, 201, 68-69, 1964.
  32. Ozawa T., A New Method of Analyzing Thermogravimetric Data, Bull. Soc. Jpn., 38, 1881-1886, 1965.
  33. Flynn J.H. and Wall L.A., A Quick, Direct Method for the Determination of Activation Energy from Thermogravimetric Data, Polym. Sci. Part B: Polym. Phys., 4, 323-328, 1966.
  34. Chrissafis K., Kinetics of Thermal Degradation of Polymers, Anal. Calorim., 95, 273-283, 2009.
  35. Vyazovkin S., Advanced Isoconversional Method, Thermal. Anal., 49, 1493-1499, 1997.
  36. Zhang W., Zhang J., Ding Y., He Q., Lu K., and Chen H., Pyrolysis Kinetics and Reaction Mechanism of Expandable Polystyrene by Multiple Kinetics Methods, Clean. Prod., 285,125042, 2021.
  37. Chauhan R.S., Gopinath S., Razdan P., Delattre C., Nirmala G.S., and Natarajan R., Thermal Decomposition of Expanded Polystyrene in a Pebble Bed Reactor to Get Higher Liquid Fraction Yield at Low Temperatures, Waste Manag., 28, 2140-2145, 2008.
  38. Mehta S., Biederman S., and Shivkumar S., Thermal Degradation of Foamed Polystyrene, Mater. Sci., 30, 2944-2949, 1995.
  39. Jun H.-C., Oh S.C., Lee H.P., and Kim H.T., A Kinetic Analysis of the Thermal-Oxidative Decomposition of Expandable Polystyrene, Korean J. Eng., 23, 761-766, 2006.
  40. Jiang L., Yang X.-R., Gao X., Xu Q., Das O., Sun J.-H., and Kuzman M.K., Pyrolytic Kinetics of Polystyrene Particle in Nitrogen Atmosphere: Particle Size Effects and Application of Distributed Activation Energy Method, Polymers, 12, 2020.
  41. Chen R., Li Q., Xu X., and Zhang D., Pyrolysis Kinetics and Reaction Mechanism of Representative Non-charring Polymer Waste with Micron Particle Size, Energy Convers. Manag., 198, 111923, 2019.
  42. Chen R., Li Q., Zhang Y., Xu X., and Zhang D., Pyrolysis Kinetics and Mechanism of Typical Industrial Non-tyre Rubber Wastes by Peak-Differentiating Analysis and Multi Kinetics Methods, Fuel, 235, 1224-1237, 2019.
Iranian Journal of Polymer Science and Technology
Volume 34, Issue 5 - Serial Number 175
January and February 2022
Pages 469-483

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics