Thermal and catalytic decomposition of waste plastics and its co-processing with petroleum residue through pyrolysis process

Abstract The thermal and catalytic decomposition of waste plastics through pyrolysis is one of the best approaches of handling plastics waste and most prospective alternative of converting waste to wealth by transforming the waste plastics into lighter fuel oils which has potential to at least replenish petroleum resources if not replace the fossil fuels through this process of recycling. Further advancement in this area of research was to co-process waste plastics along with petroleum residues and other used oil with a similar intention, opening up a new prospect of reclaiming and upgrading altogether, two relatively low graded materials to a superior quality product which may be further refined for reprocessing in the petroleum refinery. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the literature on cracking of plastics waste and it’s co-processing with petroleum residues and other heavy oil, the types of reactors and the catalyst employed in the process. The resulting product especially the liquid product from the co-processing of waste oil with polyolefin waste material has been found to possess good calorific values in the range of 44–47 MJ kg−1 while the heating value of the gaseous product was found to be in the range of 27–32 MJ Nm−3 and other characteristics similar to those of conventional fuel like diesel and thereby have a very good potential to be used as transportation fuel and other chemical feedstocks on further refining, while co-processing with other heavy oils residues have been found to have similar potential and prospect as an alternative to the conventional fuels and energy.