Abstract:
Waste generation and its proper disposal has become the main concern in the presentera.
Plastic degradation in the environment takes long time. The plastic present in our daily
waste is causing a threat to environment and our life on land and in the sea. In Pakistan,
most of the waste collected is comprised of organic waste which is mostly the food waste.
By using this plastic waste in combination with organic waste, Refuse Plastic Fuel (RPF)
can be created of a desired energy content.
Apart from this waste problem, currently countries like Pakistan needs cheaper and cleaner
energy sources. RPF gives us an option for reducing our waste by converting it into useful,
cleaner and cheaper energy source with less carbon dioxide emissions than coal.
In this research RPF is made equivalent to the energy content of coal by mixing 60 %
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and 40 % of organic food waste. The RPF blend
and the raw materials were characterized for energy content determination by using the
bomb calorimeter. Compositional analysis of original samples of PET, food waste and RPF
blend with their respective burnt out char samples were performed by comparing the
energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) results. Analysis of flue gas composition was
achieved through GCMS. Kinetic study of the synthesized RPF blend was done at three
different temperature increments of 5°C/min, 10°C/min, and 15°C/min. The Friedmann
model has been applied for the non-isothermal modelling to calculate the activation energy
and the Arrhenius factor. Results have shown that synthesized RPF blend can conveniently
be used as an alternate source for energy production and requires approximately 12 times
less activation energy in comparison to PET and 4-10 times less than coal depending upon
the coal type. Synthesized RPF provide us with 256 Million MJ of energy which gives us
71000 MW of electricity. In future, NUST waste can be utilized to produce RPF by
combining paper and plastic waste for the energy generation.
