Waste Electrical and Electronic (WEEE) Plastics to Fuel - A Review

Abstract

India facing many challenges in management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) like ineffective regulations, unsafe conditions of informal recycling, poor awareness of consumers and unwillingness of the stakeholders to address the issues. A mere 1.5% of India’s total WEEE gets recycle and almost 90% carry out by Kabadiwala. It has been observed over the past 10 years that things have been going to iron to plastic. So, plastics from WEEE have been one of the fastest growing waste streams. Pyrolysis of WEEE plastics has been viable processing route to deal with this issue. Pyrolysis of WEEE plastic is thermo chemical decomposition of organic material at high temperature and in absence of oxygen. In pyrolysis of WEEE plastics different polymers of plastic like ABS(Acrylonitrile Butadience Styrene),HIPS(High impact polystyrene) have been pyrolyzed at different temperature range with different feeding rate in stainless-steel reactor or in quartz furnace results into pyrolysis oil, gases, carbon contain char. Different catalysts have been used for obtaining halogen free end products. An analysis of the pyrolysis oil has showed the principle compounds of hydrocarbon (Toluene, Styrene, Benzene, Cumene) and gases showed the alkanes (Ethane, Propane, Butane, Methane) which have a relevant ability to release energy.