Japan develops a new recycling process for waste plastics

Japan's Kawashima Heavy Industries (IHI) has recently developed a new recycling method that converts waste polyolefin plastics into a mixture of benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX).

This process uses a niobium-containing MFI zeolite catalyst developed by the Muroran Institute of Applied Chemistry in Japan. The conversion process is divided into two steps: First, the waste polyolefin plastic is subjected to thermal degradation and gasification (the chlorine is removed in the gas scrubber) at 450-510° C. and 0.1 MPa; subsequently, the reactants are in the range of 500-580. It was converted to BTX under the effect of °C and Ga-MFI catalyst. The yield of BTX was about 50%, in which benzene was 15%, toluene was 20%, and xylene was 15%.

IHI built a test unit with a capacity of 10 kg/h and is currently optimizing the new process.

Source: China Chemical News