research on production of combustible gas from plastics using high temperature steam gasification technology

Abstract

The technology to feed woody biomass materials in powder form into a reaction tube at 800°C and react them in a high-temperature steam atmosphere to produce combustible gases such as H2, CO, and CH4 is applied to plastics. Based on the knowledge of the thermal properties required to gasify plastic materials, gasification experiments were conducted using polystyrene beads as raw material in carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmospheres, using a simple gasification apparatus capable of conducting gasification experiments in a high-temperature steam atmosphere. In the experiment, in the carbon dioxide atmosphere, the highest amount of combustible gas was generated from 7 to 15 minutes after the start of gasification, and gasification was considered to have been most accelerated. The composition of the combustible gas after 8 minutes was H2: 10.2%, CO: 22.1%, and CH4: 0.13%. In the nitrogen atmosphere in the comparison zone, unlike the carbon dioxide atmosphere, carbon monoxide was hardly generated, and hydrogen tended to be generated mainly, and the composition of the gases was H2: 7.1%, CO: 13.6%, and CH4: 0.10%, indicating that the proportion of combustible gas was small.