Thermogravimetric Characteristic and Kinetics of Co-pyrolysis of Biomass with Low-and-High Density Polyethylenes

Abstract

The pyrolysis of wood fuel (WF) and polyethylenes (low-density polyethylene; LDPE and high-density polyethyl¬ene; HDPE) in a non-catalytic and catalytic co-pyrolysis over zeolite catalyst (ZSM-5) were studied via a thermogravimetric analysis. The result obtained for the biomass with LDPE and HDPE blends shows that the peak temperature decreases sig¬nificantly only at blends with catalyst as compared to the peak temperature of isolated LDPE and HDPE materials. The peak temperature of WF/LDPE/ZSM-5 (390 °C) was lower than that of WF/HDPE/ZSM-5 (480 °C). The weight loss differences between experimental and theoretical values were greater than 1% at temperature higher than 500 °C in the various admixtures which depicts the occurrence of chemical interac¬tions between the blends. After catalysts were added to the blend, the fuels became more reactive to thermal degradation. The results of the non-catalytic pyrolysis kinetics revealed activation energy values of 54.09 and 95.90 KJ/mol for WF/ LDPE and WF/HDPE, respectively. However, with the pres¬ence of ZSM-5 activation, energy falls to 24.13 and 50.45 for WF/LDPE/ZSM-5 and WF/HDPE/ZSM-5, respectively. The findings in this work show that the kinetic of catalytic co¬pyrolysis of biomass with plastic can be viewed as a potential thermochemical conversion method that can be effectively utilized for a marked reduction in energy requirement of the process.