R

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SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL, MECHANICAL AND c
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MATERIAL ENGINEERIN DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL e
ENGINEERNG
Title: -Recycle of Plastic Using Solvent

Name of Advisor Prof. Hang Ku Kang

Prepared by 1. Keyru Serbara ID R/1043/04

2.Beshir Redwan ID R/0315/04
3.Amdet Ebrahim ID/0179/04
 Introduction
• Plastics are made up of individual molecules
called monomers, which are linked together to
form long chains called polymers.
• Plastics have become an important
environmental issue even though they do not
generally possess a direct hazard to the
environment
• Plastics are non-biodegradable; they cannot be
easily returned to the natural carbon cycle;
hence the life cycle of plastic materials ends at
waste disposal facilities.
• To overcome these environmental effects
treatment and recycling of waste plastics gained
the utmost importance.
 Statement of the problem
• Products made of plastics degrade slowly in landfills and
take approximately 20-30 years to get completely
decomposed.
• This poses a severe effect on our environment mainly
because of additives used in plastic products as these
additives contain many toxins such as lead and cadmium.
• Recycling is the best available option in our hand to
handle this situation in an eco-friendly and cost effective
way.
• . It is also an alternative way of producing different
products from an already used waste plastics that could
substitute or used along with polymer based raw materials
with high efficiency, economically feasible and
environmental friendly processes.
 Objective
General Objective
• The objective of this project is recycle of waste
plastics using effective solvent
Specific Objectives
• Reduction of environmental pollution due to
plastic wastes.
• Increase supply of plastic materials which
decrease dependency on products from
polymer based raw materials.
• Evaluate techno economical visibility of
recycling plastics by using solvent.
 Literature Review
Classifications of plastics
• Plastics are classified based on their hardening process.
 thermosetting and
 thermoplastic
• Plastics are classified in to different groups based on their
common uses. The six most common types of plastic can
easily be recycled.
 Polyethylene terephthalate (PET/PETE)
 High density polyethylene (HDPE)
 Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
 Low density polyethylene (LDPE)
 Poly propylene (PP)
 Polystyrene (PS)
Advantages and Disadvantages of
plastics
• Advantages
 Lower energy cost per unit volume
 corrosion resistance,
 chemical resistance and
 low weight makes their application advantage
• Disadvantages
 plastics that are manufactured for short term use
are polluting and occupying large areas in the
landfill.
 They are non degradable; so affect the
environment.
Source of plastic wastes
• processing wastes
Wastes collected immediately during processing
after chopping or crushing
• Further Processing Wastes or Confectioning
Wastes
These are usually produced in the course of
processing and confectioning of the semi-finished
products. These Wastes of plastic products after they
have been used
Methods of reusing and disposing
plastic wastes
• Hydrolysis - direct recovery of the original raw
materials by targeted reaction of water molecules
at the linkage points of the starting materials
• Alcholysis - Chemical degradation of of compound
to lower components
• Hydrogenation- the C-C bonds of poly-olefins and
polystyrene are broken by the addition of hydrogen.
• Combustion-in heating purpose to convert in to oil
• Dumping and degradation- often demanded that
plasters should be bio- and UV-degradable
• Pyrolysis- is a thermal cleavage in complete or partial
absence of air
• Recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste
plastics and processing the materials in to useful
products.
• We can use different agents to recycle and reuse plastics
such as
 H2 as reactant
 High temperature for pyrolysis
 Combusting agents
solvents
Advantages of recycling
• Conservation of non-renewable fossil fuels
• Reduced consumption of energy.
• Reduced amounts of solid waste going to landfill.

Plastics recycling using solvent

• Is a process of utilizing temperature and a solvent to
bring about the desired separation.
• This method works on the principle of solubility, as
a function of temperature, to dissolve only certain
polymers at certain temperatures.
Plastics mixtures are not homogeneous. They may consist
of a large number of grades with different molecular
structures and properties
This is method of separating well mixed polymeric
materials. This method is called selective dissolution and it
deals with utilizing temperature and a solvent to bring
about the desired separation. processes that eliminate the
sorting step since other mechanical recycling types apply
This solvent is able to dissolve all of the polymers
included within the mixture, but only as a function of
temperature. This process is generally
• run at Low temperature
• Minimal sort and little cleaning
• Contaminants are tolerated
 Solvent selection
• When looking at using solvents to dissolve a
polymer, some very important issues arise that are
applicable to developing a process that is
industrially and environmentally suitable
• The area of toxicity, volatility, and cost are the main
issues that must be addressed when dealing with
using solvents to generate a new, recycling process.
• The best solvent for dissolution of polyethylene is
Xylene because it is simply available, low cost, low
contamination, and low toxic
Factors affecting rate of dissolution
1. Bulk size affect mixing uniformity, contact surface
area bulk polymer with solvent and heat transfer
rate.
2. Temperature High polymer recovery corresponds to
high dissolution temperature and low initial polymer
concentrations.
3.Time Dissolving Time is one of the most influencing
factor for dissolution of plastics. Each plastics have
specific time to completely dissolve in specific solvent.
Further process after pelletization
• Extrusion. used for manufacturing continuous
‘tube’ of plastic such as piping or hose.

• Injection moulding. the plastic polymer emerges

through a nozzle into a split would. usually by
moving the screw forward in the heated barrel.

• Blow moulding. Again the spiral screw forces the

plasticized polymer through a die.This
manufacturing technique is used for manufacturing
closed vessels such as bottles and other containers
 Materials And Method
• Raw materials Used
 High Density Polyethylene
 n-hexane
Xylene,
• Physical and chemical properties measured
Physical properties measured are mass and Volume
• Dissolution temperature and time required to
complete dissolution
• Size distribution of input plastics
• Sample is taken from high density poly ethylene
plastics with size distribution (thickness) lower than
2cm.
Steps used in laboratory work
1. The waste plastic containers were first rinsed with tap
water
2. cut with a scissor into random pieces of 2–4 cm in size.
The pieces were then cleaned with distilled water and
placed in simple vacuumed oven for 3 h at 50 °C.
3. Addition of a solvent (S) and Heating of polymer at a
temperature 100°C until all solvents dissolved
4. Filtration to remove the non-dissolved polymers.
5. Addition of an anti-solvent (AS) to precipitate the
dissolved polymer.
6. Separation of the S/AS mixture by distillation for reuse.
7. Drying and Filtration of the precipitated polymer.
8. Production of pellets
 Results And Discussion
Experiment Solvent Weight of Solve Kg Time recover
no ratio S/AS sample(LDPE) nt(ml) plastic/L elapsed for y
of (S+AS) complete
dissolution
1 1:3 200 g 0.8 1:4 30 min 190 g
2 1:3 300 g 1.6 1:5.3 24 min 292 g

Discussion
Polymer recovery was favoured by an increase in
dissolution temperature and lower concentrations of
polymer in solvent.
Lower amounts of polymer were recovered in first
experiments Its concentration higher
 Techno-economic and Feasibility Study

• Mass Balance
Mass input=mass output
Mass of xylene in=mass of xylene out
Mass of n-hexane in=mass of n-hexane out
Mass of plastics in=mass of plastics out
1. Balance on dissolving tank

300 l (xylene) =258 kg+900 L n-hexane (588 kg)

HDPE&LDPE

60 kg
Dissolving
173 kg solution

6 kg impurities

27 kg HDPE 993 L(S+AS)

 1200(S+AS)

27 kg HDPE
Dissolving
177 kg solution

1000 L (S+AS)

2 Balance on drying

Drying
376 kg solution 54 kg pellets

407L (S+AS)
• Energy balance
• The stove power is 400w in which an experiment
lasted an average of 30 minute
E =P*t
Where E= Energy
P= Power
T=time
Energy utilized for one experiment
=0.4KW * 0.5 hr
=0.2 kWh to produce 200 g pellets
• Energy utilized for experiment two
• 0.6 kW*0.5 hr
• =0.3 kwh
 Economic evaluation of plant
• Purchased Equipment Cost
equipment type Equipmen price ($)

single shaft plastic shredder 1200

1 Dissolving tank 1500

2 Dryer 2500

3 mechanical sieve 1000

4 bucket elevator 1520

5 belt conveyor 1700

6 plastic extruder and heater 6000

7 screw conveyor 1500

Purchased equipment cost 16420

 Direct cost Cost

Total capital investment

Purchased equipment cost 16420

Equipment erection 6240

Purchased equipment installation 164
Instrumentation and controls 2464
Piping 2120
Electrical 1642
Buildings 2670
Yard improvements 1670
Service facilities 1010
Land 2136
Total Direct Plant Cost =$36534

Indirect Cost
Engineering and supervision & Construction expenses 4060
Contingency 1200
Contractors fee 821
Total Indirect Plant Cost $6081
Fixed capital investment(FCI) $ 42615
Working Capital 4262
Total Capital Investment $46877=937540 birr
 operating labor cost

Per Unit Personnel wage wage

Process Personnel requirement shift birr /month birr/month

Washing 6 2 800 4800

Shredder 3 1 1000 3000
Sieving 3 1 600 2400
Dissolving 3 1 1200 3600
Extrusion 3 1 1000 3000
Material handling 6 2 700 4200

Total wage/month 21000

Unit cost
We want to produce water conduit with a unit size of 1 kg weight, 3 inch diameter
and 3 meter in length.
Conduit production per annum = 57 pieces/day * 300days = 17100
Unit cost = Total Production cost/ annual production capacity
Unit cost = 1148266 /17100= 67 birr Taking a profit margin of 20% the selling price
= 80 birr/ unit conduit
Profit analysis
• Gross profit
Annual Sales = Total rate of production * Unit selling cost
= 17100*80 birr/unit conduit= 1368000 birr
Gross profit = sales – TPC = 1368000- 1148266
Gross Profit = 219734
Depreciation =FCI / 10 years
=42615/10 = $4261.5 =85230 birr
Assuming income tax = 30%
Income tax = Tax rate * (Gross profit- Depreciation)
Income tax = 0.3(561734–85230) = 142951.2 birr
• Net profit = gross profit – income tax – depreciation
=561734-142951-85230=333553 birr
Rate of Return and Pay Back Period
Rate of return=333553/937540*100=33.2%
3000000

2500000

2000000

1500000

1000000

500000

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

-500000

-1000000

-1500000
 Conclusions
• The main advantage of this method over the ones applied today
is that it separates mixtures of polymers without any significant
decrease in the value of the polymer and it can be applied in
treating non-homogeneous plastic waste.
• Excellent recoveries were achieved and with good quality of the
recycled polymers
• This technique is quite effective for the recovery of waste
polymer since no need of sorting.
• This study shows that plastics recycling is a good business with
low pay back period
• Since plastics are non-bio degradable materials recycling is a
must to protect our environment in addition to supply of plastic
materials from those wastes
 • Recommendations
• Waste plastics cause pollution to our environment.
Plastics recycling is green engineering since it is
integrated activity of production with environmental
protection.so that governmental and non-governmental
organizations should initiate entrepreneur on plastics
recycling area.
• Creating awareness on the society to store the plastic
wastes separately because it is very difficult to collect
them.
• There is high potential of waste plastic resources to the
recycling .since plastics are available, so that it is cost
effective to recycle a west plastics.
THANK YOU