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Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Plants Overview and Economic Viability Assessment of Implementation on a Small Scale

From 1869 when the first synthetic polymer started substituting natural materials, the use of polymer materials in industrial production has started increasing exponentially during the decades. This has led to increasing the quantity of polymers materials which, after reaching the end of the lifespan of corresponding products, become part of municipal waste streams, but also materials which are being discarded much sooner, during production, as scrap, rejects and byproducts. The overall composition of discarded waste is different and its suitability for recovery of these two types of waste polymer streams, as well as economic sustainability, need to be analyzed separately. In this research techno- economic analysis of the pyrolytic conversion of industry generated residual plastic waste fraction is conducted. To do that, a review of techno-economic parameters of exiting plants for plastic waste pyrolysis, by technology supplier, is done. The collected data were used to derive the dependence of economic quantities, technological parameters and production on the size and type of plant, as well as the composition of the input raw material. Results show that the economic viability of such recovery is greatly influenced by types of polymer materials that are treated, price of alternative treatment/disposal of residual plastic waste and size/capacity of the analysed plant. Pyrolytic conversion of industrial plastic waste cannot be economically viable, without a gate fee, while treating waste from only one industrial plastic waste recovery facility with the production of 10000 tonnes per day of residual waste. If only polyethylene and polypropylene are used as a feedstock, due to the economy of size, the needed gate fee is over 80 €/t, but that means that only 28% of industrial waste is recovered. If also PET is used as a feedstock, 51% of residual waste van be recovered, and the needed gate fee is decreased under 40 €/t. Conducted sensitivity analysis shows that the greatest influence on the economic viability of such plants has the economy of scale and that it is the most suitable for treating municipal plastic waste.

Plastic pyrolysis, technology review, techno-economic analysis, regression analysis, residual waste treatment

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