A review on the pyrolytic conversion of plastic waste into fuels and chemicals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We reviewed 195 references discussing the pyrolysis of plastic waste, with the aim of analyzing the technical aspects (feedstocks, process parameters, reactors, products, catalysts, kinetics, and pollutants), the economic feasibility for the industrial implementation, and the environmental assessment through Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). In the last decade, the scientific community primarily studied individual virgin polymers (79% of the references) through batch lab-scale tests, mostly at temperatures around 500◦C (46% of the selected references). Depending on the polymer (PE, PP, PET, PS), reactor type and operating conditions the relative amounts of gas/ condensable/solid products varied, whereas PVC was considered undesirable due to the formation of corrosive gases. Liquid products are the most common targets, due to their application as fuels. Several technical issues (such as the impact of residence time and pressure, and low-cost catalysts) need further attention. Very few LCA studies explored plastic waste pyrolysis, with insufficient results for a thorough environmental assessment of the processes. Only seven references investigated the techno-economic feasibility of plastic waste pyrolysis at fullscale, achieving results that are interesting but too scarce for any conclusive evaluation. This represents the most significant knowledge gap identified in the review, as the techno-economic sustainability is a fundamental factor for the technological transfer. Pyrolysis has been proven to be a viable technology to convert plastic waste into high value-added products that can be utilized as fuels, chemicals and/or building blocks. This review provides guidance for further research and aims at stimulating the interest of the industrial world regarding the possible implementation of this technology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".