Landfill plastic to liquid oil

Abstract

A full-scale Landfill Mining (LFM) project was made in 2012–2013 in Estonia at Kudjape Landfill. As a result of mining, mixed plastic waste was separated from excavated material. After sieving and shredding the received plastic fraction was washed and dried for further research. The waste plastic may be incinerated for energy and heat recovery or used as solid recovered fuel in cement industry. However, more favoured could be reprocessing this material to liquid fuel. A series of experiments were made to study pyrolysis of landfill plastic after being buried for up to ten years. Mixed plastic was treated thermally by semi-coking process as used by thermal treatment of oil shale in Estonia. The preliminary studies have shown, that oil, gas and solid carbon-rich residue may be received. All of these products show value as energy source. In this project, interdisciplinary research was done by Estonian University of Life Sciences (responsible for mining, sorting, pre-treatment and washing of landfill plastic), and Tallinn University of Technology (responsible for semi-coking of plastic waste and analyses of end-products). Results, conclusions, and proposals are presented in the article.