Green Energy Harvesting from Waste Plastic
Materials by Solar Driven Microwave Pyrolysis
Debadyoti Ghosh, Sujit Kumar Bandyopadhyay and G S Taki
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering,
Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata, India
debadyoti.ghosh@iemcal.com
Abstract—A large part of used non-bio-degradable
waste plastic material causes enormous environmental
problems by restricting the flow of the streams and
drainage system, spoiling the fertility of the soil and also
instigating harms to the animals. The matter has
become a great concern for the civilized life. In order to
maintain environmental balance, either recycling or
converting plastic/polythene waste to useful materials is
the best alternative, which has been considered here.
The process preferably should be eco-friendly and
economic. Polythene and plastics are basically long
chain of hydrocarbons and such long chain of
hydrocarbons can be disintegrated to their suitable
simpler stable monomer by pyrolysis. Here, the working
principle of a eco-friendly “Plastic to Fuel” pyrolysis
conversion plant along with its design and development
methodology is being discussed in detail. High-density
and low-density polyethylene (HDPE, LDPE) wastes are
pyrolyzed at moderately high temperature (~4500C-
5000C) under sub-atmospheric pressure inside a
pyrolysis reactor chamber. Sodium bentonite clay acts
as the catalyst to promote the conversion efficiency. The
waste polythene mass is quickly heated with the help of
a solar driven microwave oven. The efficient dielectric
heating property of microwave will be utilized to attain
the pyrolysis temperature quickly. This technique
reduces the time taken for the pyrolysis reactions and
also the total energy needed by the process. The solar
energy driven plant makes it a cost effective process.
The produced pyrolyzed gas is allowed to pass through
a water cooled condenser for distillation set up. Thus,
major part of the produced gas will be condensed to
form liquid. Usually, several gases produced in burning,
pollute the environment, but in this vacuum pyrolysis
method the emission of harmful gases are negligible.
Keywords—pyrolysis; distillation; catalyst; vacuum
reactor; vacuum pump
I. INTRODUCTION
The accumulation of synthetic waste plastic products
like bottles, bags, and micro beads in the
environment causes adverse effect to the humans and
wildlife. 100 million tones plastics are produced
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world-wide. Actually, half of all plastic produced is
designed to be used only once and then thrown away.
After using these plastic products, a major part of
plastic wastes is currently used for land filling and
remaining amount is incinerated. Since these wastes
are non-biodegradable in nature, agricultural
landfilling is not a suitable option for disposing such
plastic wastes. Moreover, due to urbanization,
landfilling has become a limited scope. The
incinerator incurs additional cost and also generates
large air pollutants containing nitrous and sulfur
oxides, dusts, dioxins and furan.
The most common municipal solid waste (MSW)
recycling techniques use composting method to
recover the organic fraction of the waste, but the
inorganic fraction is still untreated. Hence some
techniques should be adopted for destroying the
waste plastic material without any harm to the
environment. This induces the need of developing a
technique to produce higher value products from
these waste plastic materials. Waste plastic can be
pyrolyzed into liquid like diesel and petrol, appears to
be a very good alternative.
Article by Ranbir Bagri et. al.,[1] shows the pyrolysis
of lowdensity polyethylene sample with 2–3 mm
diameter pellets, at 5000C in presence of zeolite
catalyst (zeolite ZSM-5 and Y-zeolite) which
produces oils of aliphatic compounds. Without the
catalyst, pyrolysis produces oil containing low
concentration of aromatic hydrocarbons. It is also
seen that the use of Y-zeolite produces significantly
greater concentration of aromatic hydrocarbons than
that of zeolite ZSM-5 catalyst. M. Puncochar et.
al.,[2] carried out plasma pyrolysis at 20kg/hr
capacity to transform high calorific plastic waste into
gaseous products containing hydrogen, carbon
monoxide, methane, acetylene, ethylene and other
higher order hydrocarbons. The products were
precisely characterized by gas chromatograph and
products were suitable as syngas applications. No tar
was produced in this process. Mochamad Syamsiro
 et. al.,[3] studied oil produced from municipal wastes
by sequential pyrolysis (4500C)& catalytic reforming
process using commercial Y-Zeolite & natural
Zeolite as catalysts. Natural Zeolite catalyst enhanced
the liquid product compared with Y-Zeolite catalyst.
The quality of produced oil was inferior to those of
commercial diesel. Shafferina Dayana, et. al.,[4]
reviewed several pyrolysis processes for each type of
plastics and the parameters like pyrolysis
temperatures, type of reactors, residence time,
pressure, catalysts, type of fluidizing gas and its flow
rate that influences the pyrolysis process. The
optimization process to produce fuel was vividly
discussed. Mantesh Basappa Khot, et. al.,[5] studied
the fuel preparation from low density plastic waste by
thermal pyrolysis without catalyst at about 3000C
temperature in absence of oxygen. Here thermal
cracking process has been used without catalyst.
Various properties of plasto-fuel are compared with
petrol and diesel. B. Chiwara et. al.,[6] used the
Attainable Region (AR) optimization techniquebased
pyrolysis of HDPE or LDPE samples separately,
results maximum outputs with less number of mixed
components. It also shows that various types of
plastics produce different types of products. Awinash
Kumar et. al.,[7] give a study which reveals the
physicochemical characterization and catalytic
behavior of locally available sodium bentonite clay
that can be a useful catalyst in pyrolysis of waste
plastic within the temperature range of 4500C to
5000C.
II. BASIC PROCESSES INVOLVED IN PYROLYSIS &
ROLE OF CATALYST ON TEMPERATURE & ON FINAL
PRODUCTS
In Pyrolysis process, Polyethylene is broken into the
following components:
[-CH2-CH2 -] n + H2O + Heat xCH4 + yH2 +
zCO + Soot + higher Hydrocarbons ..…. (i)
CH4 + H2O CO + 3H2 …...(ii)
C + H2O CO + H2
Our Proposed Route:
This vacuum pyrolysis process breaks down the long
polymeric chains to form useful smaller molecular
weight stable compounds. The products of this
process are extremely useful as fuels or chemicals.
The pyrolysis reaction can be carried with or without
using a catalyst atless oxygen environment. Without
catalyst, it is thermal cracking or thermolysis, and in
the presence of catalyst, it is catalytic pyrolysis.
Pyrolysis process involves the cracking polymeric
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materials by heating at a very high temperature.
Ideally the heating is to be carried out at oxygen free
environment to avoid oxidation ata temperature
between 3500C and 9000C. The products formed
include a carbonized char (solid residues) and a
volatile fraction. A fraction of the volatile
componentis condensed to produce paraffins,
isoparaffins, olefins, naphthene, and aromatics. The
remaining non-condensable gas is of high calorific
value. The products formed and their precise
composition depends on the type of the plastic waste
and the process conditions. The prominent advantage
of catalytic cracking process is that the catalyst
lowers the reaction temperature and time. In thermal
cracking a broad variety of products are formed by
braking polymeric chain, but in catalytic degradation
the product distribution will be much narrower, on
and around lighter hydrocarbons. The cost-
effectiveness makes process more attractive. So, this
method is usually adopted for the synthesis of
petroleum based oil. The importance of this work lies
in the performance comparison of various catalysts
like barium carbonate, zeolite 1, silica alumina 1
(SA1) silica alumina 2 (SA2) and zeolite 2 for the
thermal cracking of waste polythene and selecting the
most suitable catalyst based on the yield and thermo
physical properties of the hydrocarbon oil obtained.
III. BASIC PRINCIPLE AND PROCESS
In this communication, a sustainable process has
been described where polyethylene or waste plastics
are pyrolyzed in high temperature (4500C-5000C) in
presence of sodium bentonite clay catalyst. The main
advantage of bentonite containing 80-90%
montmorillinite is its absorption properties which has
rendered its use as binders/fillers [7]. Sodium
bentonite clay is very cheap and locally available.
The heat is supplied to the pyrolysis chamber by a
solar driven microwave oven. The gas produced
during pyrolysis is allowed to pass through a
cascaded water-cooled condenser of a distillation
setup. The condensed liquid will be collected at two
different temperatures. Thus, the major part of the
produced gas will be condensed into liquid. In this
cascaded distillation process, a small amount of the
non-condensable produced gas will be allowed to
escape in the nature through proper filter
arrangement. As the feed material is either high
density poly-ethylene (HDPE) or low density poly-
ethylene (LDPE) for this process, the optimum
process temperature will be a unique value. A close
loop continuous monitoring and supervisory system
enables to adjust the temperature of the pyrolysis
reactor for checking production rate and the quality
of the produced liquid. Our proposed technology may
 serve as a dual purpose of not only taking care of the
waste management problem, but also producing
cheaper, safer oil products for running IC engine
operated irrigation pumps to be used in the rural non-
electrified areas and also for motor boats used in the
rivers. It is basically a cost effective eco-friendly
recycling system.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
A schematic diagram of the complete set up is shown
in fig.1 below. As this plant will run in day time,
solar power harnessed in the day time will meet the
electrical power requirement of the microwave oven.
Here, several nos. of commercially available
microwave ovens will deliver the microwave
dielectric heating power operating in parallel
configuration. A multi-point temperature monitoring
and control system will be used to measure the
temperature at various levels. This close loop
supervisory system will control the switching on and
off of the microwave oven. This control system also
controls the sequence of raw material pouring
through a valved hoper, opening/closing the
multiway valve V, and also switching on/off the
vacuum pump. The total process control including
the flow and temperature of cooling water will be
supervised by this system. A scroll dry vacuum pump
will create the desired vacuum in the reactor.
Fig.1. Block diagram of total system
V. PLAN OF PRODUCT ANALYSIS
A plan for analysis of the products for the present
work is as follows:
(i) Non-condensable gases derived from the pyrolysis
of polyethylene will be characterized and examined
using Gas Chromatograph to ensure the absence of
any hazardous components which may cause harmful
effect to the environment.
(ii) The yield and compositional analysis of produced
hydrocarbon oil will be carried out at various
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temperature levels for optimization of the produced
hydrocarbon oil.
(iii) Comparative analysis of the produced fuel will
be carried out for comparing with petrol and diesel to
improve its quality for commercial use.
VI. CONCLUSION
This is a burning topic that involves a great challenge
to restore clean environment in the society. The
process and technique mentioned here is very much
environment friendly and it can be used for
destroying waste plastic materials in reuse concept.
This technique has the ethical aspect of cleaning the
environment from harmful waste plastic materials as
well as the commercial aspect of producing
combustible fuel at a very cheap rate. Our target is to
optimize the route for minimum power utilization
with the quality improvement of produced fuel, so
that in near future it can be an ideal method of
obtaining diesel and petrol from polythene and plastic
waste.
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Satyajit
Chakrabarti, Director of Institute of Engineering &
Management and Dr. Malay Gangopadhyay, HOD of
ECE department of IEM for providing the fund to
carry out the project and also for their continuous
support. We also would like to thank Samit Karmakar
and Soumik Kumar Kundu for helping us by
providing initial information.
REFERENCES
[1] Ranbir Bagri, Paul T. Williams, “Catalytic pyrolysis of
polyethylene”, Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis,
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[2] M. Puncochar, B. Ruj, P.K. Chatterjee, “Development of
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Engineering 42 (2012) 461 – 473, Elsevier 2012.
[3] Mochamad Syamsiro, Harwin Saptoadi, Tinton Norsujianto,
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Yoshikawa, “Fuel Oil Production from Municipal Plastic
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