Modeling pyrolysis kinetics of plastic mixtures

Modeling pyrolysis behavior of waste plastic mixtures is of importance for design and Operation of reactors which convert these waste plastics into valuable chemicals. However, because of limited understanding of their degradation behavior even for single component plastic wastes, modeling degradation kinetics of plastic mixtures is a challenging task. In this work, we report modeling of binary and ternary mixture degradation kinetics of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), low density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP). A simple mixing rule approach was used with one cross-kinetic degradation parameter per each binary. Ternary kinetics were completely predictive and showed good agreement with the experimental data. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.