Development of a small-scale heat treatment apparatus for profiling the pyrolysis behavior of plastic and rubber materials
摘要
To monitor pyrolysis progression and investigate the approximate yield distributions of solid residues and pyrolysis oil generated during the pyrolysis of plastic and rubber materials, a small-scale heat treatment apparatus capable of recovering solid residues and pyrolysis oil was developed. Polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyisoprene were pyrolyzed by heating from 25 °C to 500 °C at a rate of 20 °C/min under a helium flow, and the gaseous products generated by pyrolysis were introduced into a gas chromatograph equipped with a thermal conductivity detector. These results suggest that the onset, progression, and completion of pyrolysis can be identified from the thermograms along with the volatilization behavior of the pyrolysis oil. Furthermore, the yield distribution of solid residues and pyrolysis oils at 500 °C was lower than those reported in the literature. This discrepancy is likely due to the partial volatilization of the condensed pyrolysis oils and operational losses during pyrolysis. These findings suggest that the heat treatment apparatus developed in this study can serve as a valuable qualitative tool for screening pyrolysis conditions in the industrial-scale chemical recycling of plastic and rubber materials, although improving quantitative accuracy through redesigning and modifying the apparatus remains an important issue for future work.