A review on pyrolysis: Plastic waste recycling method

Plastics are basically long chain hydrocarbon compound synthesizes from non-renewable liquid petroleum products. Since plastics have special and variety of features like easy availability and handling, light weight, energy efficiency, non-degradable nature, cheap, faster production, and design flexibility, it has gained wide popularity in short time period and becomes indispensable part of day-to-day life. The increasing usage and production of plastic with exponential rate have resulted in increasing plastic waste disposal problems which may cause adverse effects on environment and human health. Moreover, fast exhaustion of non-renewable fossil has also become a major problem. To encounter both the problem at a same time, plastic waste conversion method has come into picture. Several plastic waste conversion methods such as landfills, plastic incineration, and recycling are available out of which recycling has gained a lot of interest. One of the important recycling methods is pyrolysis, which is referred as most suitable method due to its advantages like flexible, easy in handling, less intense sorting, less labor intensive, and liquid oil obtained from pyrolysis is having high quality as well gaseous by-product also of high calorific value. In this review article, an effort has been made to provide concise details about different types of waste plastics, their waste management strategies, specially focusing on the basics of pyrolysis process and potential of pyrolysis process for different plastic types. The review article will pave the path for different researchers working in plastic waste management techniques.