Abstract
Recycling waste plastics into pyrolytic fuels is a highly promising energy-saving approach. The improvement and enhancement of the resulting fuel quality from heavy oil-derived-waste plastics pyrolysis is in high demand. We performed catalytic reforming of heavy oils-derived polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pyrolysis to simulta-neously improve the quality of oils into valuable fuels (gasoline-range hydrocarbon) and reduce the oxygenated compounds. Nickel-impregnated HZSM5-70 catalysts were prepared by the wet-impregnation method. The catalytic process was carried out in a catalytic tubular reactor at a constant feeding rate of 2.5 mL/h. In particular, various processing factors were examined by varying the impregnation loading of nickel (2-10 wt%), catalyst mass (1-5 wt%), and process temperature (400-500 degrees C). Increasing any of the three process parameters resulted in a relatively similar decrease in the quantity of liquid products and an improvement in the quality of reformed products. The best quality of reformed oils were obtained at 5 % catalyst loading and 10 % nickel loading on the catalyst at 450 degrees C. FT-IR analyses show that raising process parameters has a substantial influence on increasing aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon content, while lowering the quantity of undesired products (acids, alcohols, and ketones) in the oils. GC-MS analysis results confirmed that the relative content/area of liquid products predominantly contains gasoline-range hydrocarbons (C-5-C-12), with a total of 33.39 % on blank-run. The hydrocarbons (C-5-C-12) production from HZSM5-70 and NiO/HZSM5-70 was greatly enhanced to 66.48 % and 85.05 %, repectively, while the oxygenated compounds, including alcohols, acids, and ketones were reduced from 39.38 to 10.75 % (total area). In comparison to HZSM5-70, the NiO/HZSM5-70 catalyst performs more effectively, retaining its catalytic activity after five cycles (similar to 3 % decrease). Thus, the NiO/HZSM5-70 exhibits high catalytic performance and reusability.