Catalytic upcycling of waste plastics over nanocellulose derived biochar catalyst for the coupling harvest of hydrogen and liquid fuels

Chenxi Wang; Hanwu Lei; Xiao Kong; Rongge Zou; Moriko Qian; Yunfeng Zhao; Wendy Mateo

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146463

Catalytic upcycling of waste plastics over nanocellulose derived biochar catalyst for the coupling harvest of hydrogen and liquid fuels

Chenxi Wang, Hanwu Lei, Xiao Kong, Rongge Zou, Moriko Qian, Yunfeng Zhao, Wendy Mateo

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

A powerful simple biochar catalyst derived from nanocellulose was applied to the catalytic upcycling of waste plastics into H₂ and liquid fuels for the first time. For the results from model low-density polyethylene (LDPE) pyrolysis, the C₈-C₁₆ aliphatics and monocyclic aromatics were dominant constitutes of the liquid product with the yields ranging from 22 to 68 wt%. At the temperature of 500 °C and biochar to LDPE ratio surpassing 3, the LDPE could be completely degraded into liquid and gas without wax production. A wax yield of 16 wt% was observed at the temperature of 450 °C and biochar to LDPE ratio of 4, which was dramatically lower than that (77 wt%) from the absence of biochar at the temperature of 500 °C. Up to 92 vol% of H₂ was detected in the gaseous product with a yield of 36 wt%. The lower temperatures and higher biochar to LDPE ratios favored increasing the generation of H₂ at the expense of light gas C_nH_m especially CH₄. Moreover, this biochar catalyst was tested effectively to convert the real waste plastics including grocery bags and packaging tray into valuable liquid and H₂-enriched gas.

Original language	English
Article number	146463
Journal	Science of the Total Environment
Volume	779
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146463
State	Published - Jul 20 2021
Externally published	Yes

Funding

This study was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2016-67021-24533 and 2018-67009-27904 from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture. We would like to thank Dr. Aftab Ahamed from Bioproducts, Sciences, and Engineering Laboratory (BSEL) for the help with the training of GC/MS analysis. We acknowledge the efforts of Jonathan Lomber from the Analytical Chemistry Service Center (ACSC) in performing TGA. And we are grateful for the help of Dr. Valerie Lynch-Holm and Dr. Dan Mullendore from Franceschi Microscopy & Imaging Center (FMIC) at Washington State University.

Keywords

Biochar catalyst
Catalytic pyrolysis
Hydrogen production
Nanocellulose
Waste plastics

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10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146463

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title = "Catalytic upcycling of waste plastics over nanocellulose derived biochar catalyst for the coupling harvest of hydrogen and liquid fuels",

abstract = "A powerful simple biochar catalyst derived from nanocellulose was applied to the catalytic upcycling of waste plastics into H2 and liquid fuels for the first time. For the results from model low-density polyethylene (LDPE) pyrolysis, the C8-C16 aliphatics and monocyclic aromatics were dominant constitutes of the liquid product with the yields ranging from 22 to 68 wt%. At the temperature of 500 °C and biochar to LDPE ratio surpassing 3, the LDPE could be completely degraded into liquid and gas without wax production. A wax yield of 16 wt% was observed at the temperature of 450 °C and biochar to LDPE ratio of 4, which was dramatically lower than that (77 wt%) from the absence of biochar at the temperature of 500 °C. Up to 92 vol% of H2 was detected in the gaseous product with a yield of 36 wt%. The lower temperatures and higher biochar to LDPE ratios favored increasing the generation of H2 at the expense of light gas CnHm especially CH4. Moreover, this biochar catalyst was tested effectively to convert the real waste plastics including grocery bags and packaging tray into valuable liquid and H2-enriched gas.",

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Catalytic upcycling of waste plastics over nanocellulose derived biochar catalyst for the coupling harvest of hydrogen and liquid fuels

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