Plastic Waste Conversion over a Refinery Waste Catalyst.
Ina VollmerMichael J F JenksRafael Mayorga GonzálezFlorian MeirerBert M WeckhuysenPublished in: Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) (2021)
Polypropylene (PP) makes up a large share of our plastic waste. We investigated the conversion of PP over the industrial Fluid Catalytic Cracking catalyst (FCC-cat) used to produce gasoline from crude oil fractions. We studied transport limitations arising from the larger size of polymers compared to the crude oil-based feedstock by testing the components of this catalyst separately. Infrared spectroscopy and confocal fluorescence microscopy revealed the role of the FCC matrix in aromatization, and the zeolite Y domains in coking. An equilibrium catalyst (ECAT), discarded during FCC operation as waste, produced the same aromatics content as a fresh FCC-cat, while coking decreased significantly, likely due to the reduced accessibility and activity of the zeolite domains and an enhanced cracking activity of the matrix due to metal deposits present in ECAT. This mechanistic understanding provides handles for further improving the catalyst composition towards higher aromatics selectivity.
Keyphrases
- room temperature
- ionic liquid
- heavy metals
- reduced graphene oxide
- highly efficient
- metal organic framework
- carbon dioxide
- wastewater treatment
- visible light
- sewage sludge
- municipal solid waste
- life cycle
- single molecule
- optical coherence tomography
- risk assessment
- gold nanoparticles
- high throughput
- molecular dynamics
- high speed
- molecular dynamics simulations
- single cell
- mass spectrometry
- quantum dots