Polymer wastes have been increased in Korea every year. Several methods have been studied to show the best way to treat the polymer wastes. The polymer wastes need special care in treatment and disposal due to their diverse characteristics. Because most of polymer wastes such as plastics have difficult burning problems.
The rotary kiln is widely accepted as one of the most versatile tools for the incineration of industrial wastes. The great advantage of the rotary kiln over other types of incinerators is its ability to accept virtually every type of wastes. Typically wastes can be categorized as gases, liquids, sludges and solids.
The aim of this study are to develop the reaction kinetic analysis involved in the pyrolysis of plastic waste considering various pyrolysis temperature, pyrolysis time and oxygen concentration. Simplified heat transfer and heat release pattern were developed to obtain the temperature profile with amount of air supply and oxygen concentration in combustion air. Also, other objective of this study is to find of the pollutants emission characteristics from polymer waste treatment system of rotary kiln incinerator.
Thermogravimetric analyzer showed that the pyrolytic propensity of plastics, polyethylene(PE), polystylene(PS), polyprophylene(PP) and polyvinyl chloride(PVC) could be estimated by simple addition of those of individual plastics without involving any synergistic or inhibition effects. Although this results were an encouraging one for developing the pyrolysis process with plastics, the changes in the physical state of plastics during the pyrolysis reaction were to be viewed with a plain kinetics. Most of variations of pyrolytic propensity in constant heating rate conditions could be described by a modified Arrhenius-type rate equation including the effects of oxygen concentration and sample weight, but those in isothermal conditions followed by constant heating required a device within the rate expression to accommodate transport phenomena accompanying the pyrolysis reactions.
Plastics except PVC are represented by the first-order single reaction type. The overall chemical reaction and temperature profile in rotary kiln with oxygen enrichment are different along the length of rotary kiln.
The results were compared with the estimation results of ICI 04 computer program of a rotary kiln incinerator with the option of an afterburner.
