Conversion of waste plastic material into aromatics

The global production of plastics is increasing exponentially in the last few decades. Most of these plastics are used for short service life, such as bags and packaging. The improper disposal of plastic material represents an enormous environmental burden and has resulted into a large strain on the existing disposal methods i.e. landfill and incineration. Landfill space is becoming scarce and expensive, whereas, incineration (to recover energy) produces toxic gaseous products and shifts a solid waste problem into an air pollution problem. Mechanical recycling of plastic has become an increasingly better alternative, however quality of recycled plastics is often lower compared to virgin ones, which restricts the range of its possible utilization In this project we propose to develop a novel process for conversion of waste plastic material, into valuable (aromatic) products using chemical recycling method. The catalytic conversion of polyolefin into valuable products is a very challenging task because of the nature of the feed (waste plastic material). KFUPM team is planning to use a batch reactor system equipped with online-GC-DHA for product analysis. A series of novel catalysts will be prepared for this project