Copyrolysis of Waste Cartons and Polyolefin Plastics under Microwave Heating and Characterization of the Products

Municipal organic solid waste contains many recoverable resources, including biomass materials and plastics. The high oxygen content and strong acidity of bio-oil limit its application in the energy field, and the oil quality is mainly improved by copyrolysis of biomass with plastics. Therefore, in this paper, a copyrolysis method was utilized to treat solid waste, namely, common waste cartons and waste plastic bottles (polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE)) as raw materials. The products were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, elemental analysis, GC, and GC/MS to investigate the reaction pattern of the copyrolysis. The results show that the addition of plastics can reduce the residue content by about 3%, and the copyrolysis at 450 °C can increase the liquid yield by 3.78%. Compared with single waste carton pyrolysis, no new product appeared in the copyrolysis liquid products but the oxygen content of the liquid decreased from 65% to less than 8%. The content of CO2 and CO in the copyrolysis gas product is 5-15% higher than the theoretical value; the O content of the solid products increased by about 5%. This indicates that waste plastics can promote the formation of l-glucose and small molecules aldehydes and ketones by providing H radicals and reduce the oxygen content in liquids. Thus, copyrolysis improves the reaction depth and product quality of waste cartons, which provides a certain theoretical reference for the industrial application of solid waste copyrolysis.