Abstract
To examine the possibility of thermal recycling of waste PET bottles, a commercial LPG-fueled ceramic burner has been first improved to burn PET-resin powder as an auxiliary fuel and the combustion characteristics have been investigated by varying the median diameter and the mass flow rate of PET-powder. According to the results, the proposed burner realized reasonable combustion performance comparable to the original LPG-fueled ceramic burner, being reliable experimental certification to the possibility and availability of the proposed idea. The use of PET-resin powder as one of the alternative fuels in the ceramic kiln furnace was also found to be efficient from the viewpoint of saving energy resources and attaining low environmental impact. In this paper, under the fixed conditions of a total heat input of 11.6 kW and an overall equivalence ratio of 0.8, the combustion characteristics of the improved burner are experimentally investigated in the model furnace by varying the replacement rate and the mass median diameter of PET-powder. Brief qualitative discussion on the behavior of unburnt PET particles is also made by transforming the mass-based histograms to the profiles of particle number fraction of virtual spherical particles.
