Understanding Slow Pyrolysis of Plastic

Plastic pollution is a growing environmental concern worldwide. Recently, there are growing interests to convert plastic into varieties of advance materials with tailorable properties through slow-pyrolysis. However, unlike fast pyrolysis of plastic which has been extensively investigated, the process of plastic slow pyrolysis is so far not well understood. Therefore, in the present study, slow pyrolysis of plastic was investigated with a commercial pyrolyzer – GC/MS system. The overall product distributions, including gas, volatile and solid products were tracked at different heating rates (2, 20, 40℃/min) and different temperature regions (100-200℃, 200-300℃ and 300-600℃). Solid residues were further characterized for potential material application to determine the morphology, pore structure, conductivity, interfacial chemistry, and mechanical properties using SEM/in-situ TEM, XRD, BET, FT-IR/Raman, XPS and solid phase NMR.