An Investigation on Thermal Recycling of Recycled Plastic Resin (Combustion Characteristics of PET-Resin Powder in a Ceramic Kiln Furnace)

Abstract

Recently a great deal of waste PET bottles has been accumulated in the stock yards without any processing. In the ceramic kiln industries, commercial grade LPG is generally employed as a gaseous fuel and used simply as a heat source. It is therefore very useful and necessary for replacing a part of gaseous LPG with an alternative fuel, such as PET-resin powder, from the view point of energy saving and low environmental impact. The proposed twin-fueled burner is then designed to burn PET-resin powder as an auxiliary fuel, while gaseous propane is employed as a main fuel. Some improvements are introduced to a commercial ceramic burner, in order to enable retro-fitting the proposed burner to various types of established burner systems. By taking into account of fusible properties of PET-powder, some auxiliary but indispensable devices are made to the construction and dimensions of the ceramic burner for preventing not only PET-powder from melting in the supply pipe, but also dissolved PET-resin from adhering to the burner wall. By varying the overall equivalence ratio under a constant combustion loading, combustion behaviors of the proposed ceramic burner are examined and analyzed experimentally, based on both optical observations of the flames and measurements of temperature and exhaust gas compositions at the exit of the model furnace.