Abstract
This study presents experiments and modeling of batch distillation for the separation of styrene monomer from polystyrene pyrolysis oil. The bottoms obtained from the batch distillation was further fractionated applying a short-path distillation unit to study the separation efficiency of styrene from the polystyrene pyrolysis oil. GC-FID and GCMS were applied for the composition analysis of the polystyrene pyrolysis oil, distillate, and bottom fractions. Styrene monomer was obtained with a purity of 99.9 wt% from the batch distillation. The batch distillation was modeled employing the NRTL–RK thermodynamic model. A good agreement was achieved for the purity of styrene between the experimental analysis and model prediction. Additionally, a continuous distillation column was modeled for the scale-up of the process. Furthermore, viscosities and densities of the bottoms fraction were measured at the temperature range of 298–348 K.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 65-75 |
| Journal | Chemical Engineering Research and Design |
| Volume | 195 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2023 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
Roshi Dahal acknowledges the financial support of Fortum and Neste Foundation for post-graduate studies. Business Finland is acknowledged for the funding of MoPo Multitechnological recycling of polystyrene 1545/31/2020 - project. Academy of Finland is acknowledged for the funding of FIRI2016 project. Aleksi Vartiainen is greatly acknowledged for performing distillation runs, analysis of distillate fractions and reporting. Many thanks to Dr. Juha Linnekoski for the GCMS laboratory support. I am grateful to Maurice Forget for reading and providing suggestions for the language improvement.
Keywords
- Batch distillation
- Plastic waste
- Pyrolysis
- Short-path distillation
- Styrene monomer
