Essential characteristics of plastics waste for pyrolysis process: Comparison of selected packaging plastics and PVC

The poor degradability of plastics has led to huge plastics deposit in a landfill of which pyrolysis technology has been proposed to solve plastics waste problem. this paper reports the study on characteristics of two kinds of plastic wastes: selected packaging plastics and pvc. characterizations have been performed for investigating water content,ash content,and decomposition temperature. the results revealed that the water content of packaging plastic waste was 0.69 ± 0.11%,while pvc was 1.22 ± 0.24%. the ash contents are 2.36 ± 1.03 % and 27.24±1.73 % for packaging plastics waste and pvc waste respectively. plastic waste from packaging application and pvc waste decomposed at a temperature of 300-500°c and 200-800°c respectively. decomposition of pvc waste took place in three stages: 200-370°c,370-525°c and 600-800°c. it is recommended that the pyrolysis process should be conducted in the range of 300-500°c for packaging plastic waste and 200-800°c for pvc waste. © 2015 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.