Gasification of non-recycled plastic packaging material containing aluminum: Hydrogen energy production and aluminum recovery

This research aims to recover aluminum and hydrogen energy from non-recycled plastic material containing aluminum (NRP) using gasification. The gasification was conducted by a lab-scale fixed bed gasifier with controlling different temperature and equivalent ratio (ER) ranged from 600 °C to 900 °C and from 0.10 to 0.30, respectively. According to the syngas yield analytical results, the syngas yield increased significantly with an increase in ER. In the 900 °C case, the syngas yield increased from 4.47 m³/kg to 7.73 m³/kg with ER increasing from 0.1 to 0.3. This is because good gasification practice occurred at higher ER resulting in oxidation and exothermic reactions. Based on the measured syngas composition results, the H₂ and CO fractions increased with increased gasification temperature. In the ER 0.3 case, as the gasification temperature increased from 600 °C to 900 °C, the H₂ and CO fractions increased from 0.64 mol.% to 15.54 mol.% and from 2.89 mol.% to 15.54 mol.%, respectively. The syngas heating values were calculated ranging between 0.8 MJ/Nm³ and 5.1 MJ/Nm³. Meanwhile, cold gas efficiency (CGE) was approximately 72.2%, implying that 72.2% recovered energy was produced from gasified non-recycled plastic packaging material containing aluminum. The major recovered aluminum speciation was metallic aluminum using XRD identification. The recovered aluminum purity and recovery ranged from 73.1 wt% to 100.0 wt% and from 79% to 105%, respectively. In summary, the hydrogen energy production and aluminum recovery produced from non-recycled plastic packaging material containing aluminum using gasification was successfully developed.