Synthesis of Carbon Nanostructures from Plastic Waste using Catalysts

Abstract

In this research, carbon nanostructures (CNs) have been synthesized using pyrolysis of plastic waste polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) with different catalyst in a closed reactor made from stainless steel. Different oxides (MgO, MoO3 and ZnO) were using as a catalyst, different temperatures (800 and 1000) °C and a different decomposition duration (1 and 2) hours were using each time. The experimental part was divided into two parts. The first part did not include the use of nitrogen gas to synthesize carbon nanostructures, while the second part used nitrogen gas in order to synthesize fullerene nanotubes. The morphological and structural characterizations of synthesized carbon nanostructures were performed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results of XRD and FE-SEM have shown that CNs were present as nano figures. The study of adsorption showed that the synthesized CNs have high adsorption capacity, low ash content and low moisture content, which enable the product to be used in multiple application fields. The advantage of the method is that using one reactor for a short time as opposed to previous researches which used in two reactors