Entrepreneurship Proposal

Title: Generation of Bio-Gas in controlled environment using Utilized Plastic bags

Overview:
The effects of plastic bags on the environment are really quite devastating. According to the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), between 500 billion to a trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year. The bags
find their way directly into landfills, oceans, rivers, and parks. Normal plastic bags do not decompose quickly.
Thus, these bags will be around for centuries. When they finally begin to break down, toxic substances will seep
into the ground and be washed into lakes, rivers, and the oceans. Animals have also been affected by Plastic
bags. Some sea mammals get caught in the bags and aren’t able to come to the surface to breathe and they
drown. Sometimes terrestrial animals, birds, or fish ingest pieces of a plastic bag due to which their digestive
system blocks and cause them to die.
The environmental balance of the waterways is being thrown off by the rate of plastic bags finding their way
into the mouths and intestinal tracts of aquatic mammals. Throughout the world plastic bags are responsible
for suffocation deaths of woodland animals as well as inhibiting soil nutrients. Every bag that ends up in the
woodlands of the country threatens the natural progression of wildlife i.e. both plants and animals. The
indefinite period of time that the average plastic bag takes to breakdown can be literally hundreds of years.
Because the break down rate is so slow the chances that the bag will harmlessly go away are almost none.
Finally, a solution to dispose it off with the help of Nano catalyst is put forward.

How Eliminate shopping bag using controlled environment?

We converted the waste plastic bags into biogas using Nano-catalyst by the process of catalytic gasification. The
process of thermal cracking by gasification was carried out in box furnace. Gasification is a process that converts
organic or fossil fuel based carbonaceous materials into saturated and unsaturated Hydrocarbon gases. This is
achieved by reacting the material at high temperatures (>700°C), without combustion, with a controlled amount
of oxygen and steam. The use of catalyst in this process can bring the temperature further down making this
process more effective and cost-efficient.

Hence, we used Nano catalyst by mixing it with waste plastic bags in the process. We produced and examined
novel catalyst with homogeneous, well dispersed Nano-particles on a high-surface functional structured
support, in relation to the process conditions of gasification of plastic wastes for gas quality in a continuous
operation.

Nano material-based catalysts are usually heterogeneous catalysts broken up into metal Nano particles in order
to speed up the catalytic process. The use of Nano catalyst in this process also resulted in enhanced number of
hydrocarbon gas production (10 more gases produced) and thereby produced high yield, clean, high calorific
value gas from the gasification of plastic waste in less time. The GC-MS of the resulted gases showed that they
entirely consist of Hexene, Butene, Octene and a few other hydrocarbon gases (mostly unsaturated). Hence,
long chains of polymers were broken down by thermal catalytic cracking and the time and temperature needed
for breaking long chains were brought down. We were able to make sufficient and useful gas at 350°C by Nano
catalytic gasification.