Carbon nanotubes production from real-world waste plastics and the pyrolysis behaviour

Yuan Zhu; Jie Miao; Yingrui Zhang; Chunchun Li; Yuanyuan Wang; Yi Cheng; Mingce Long; Jiawei Wang; Chunfei Wu

doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2023.05.002

Carbon nanotubes production from real-world waste plastics and the pyrolysis behaviour

Waste Manag. 2023 Jul 1:166:141-151. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2023.05.002. Epub 2023 May 10.

Authors

Yuan Zhu¹, Jie Miao², Yingrui Zhang¹, Chunchun Li¹, Yuanyuan Wang¹, Yi Cheng³, Mingce Long⁴, Jiawei Wang⁵, Chunfei Wu⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom.
² School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China.
³ Bioenergy Research Group, EBRI, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom.
⁴ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Thin Film and Microfabrication Technology (Ministry of Education), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China. Electronic address: long_mc@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁵ Bioenergy Research Group, EBRI, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom. Electronic address: j.wang23@aston.ac.uk.
⁶ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom. Electronic address: c.wu@qub.ac.uk.

PMID: 37172515
DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2023.05.002

Abstract

The investigation of the pyrolysis behaviour of real-world waste plastics (RWWP) and using them as the feedstock to produce carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could serve as an effective solution to address the global waste plastics catastrophe. This research aimed to characterize the pyrolysis behaviour of RWWP via thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and fast pyrolysis-TG/mass spectrometry (Py-TG/MS) analyses. Activation energies (131.04 kJ mol^-1 -171.04 kJ mol^-1) for RWWP pyrolysis were calculated by three methods: Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) method, Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) method, and Starink method. Py-TG/MS results indicated that the RWWP could be identified as polystyrene (RWWP-1), polyethylene (RWWP-2), polyethylene terephthalate (RWWP-3, 4), and polypropylene (RWWP-5, 6). In addition, RWWP-1, 2, 5, 6 outperform RWWP-3 and 4 as sources of carbon for producing CNTs. The results showed a high carbon yield of 32.21 wt% and a high degree of CNT purity at 93.04%.

Keywords: Carbon nanotubes; Product characteristics; Pyrolysis behaviour; Waste plastics.

MeSH terms

Kinetics
Nanotubes, Carbon*
Plastics*
Pyrolysis
Thermogravimetry

Substances

Plastics
Nanotubes, Carbon