Track: Energy

Abstract

Plastics are essentially made up from fossil fuels and can therefore be reverted to oil. Pyrolysis involves the conversion of plastic wastes to fuel by thermally degrading long chain polymers into small complex molecules in the absence of oxygen. The objective of this study was to minimize plastic pollution and overdependence on fossil fuels by conversion of waste plastics to fuel. This study proposed a plastic oil pyrolysis plant as a solution to the challenges of plastic pollution and ever-growing demand for fossil fuels. The pyrolysis process is advantageous because presorting is not required, and the plastic waste can be directly fed and does not require pretreatment prior to the process. The plastics available for recycling currently used in the model is 15.83% of available quantity. The projected production is 29,826 liters per day. The preliminary evaluation showed that the pyrolysis economically viable project since the fuel obtained from the process is cheaper as compared to the convectional diesel as seen in the current market prices retails for about Ksh80 (US$ 0.8).