مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تفکیک و بازیافت بهینه زباله های پلاستیکی با در نظر گرفتن امکان سنجی اقتصادی و آلودگی زیست محیطی – الزویر 2023

Abstract

     This work suggests an optimal strategy to sort and recycle plastic waste as a renewable energy resource with maximizing economic feasibility and mitigating environmental pollution. To derive the optimal sorting and recycling strategies of plastic waste, a novel optimization model is developed; it calculates the overall profit by subtracting the profit of recycling plastic from the total annualized cost. Then the model is used to identify the optimal strategy to sort and recycle plastic waste as a renewable energy resource in mixed-integer nonlinear programming that maximizes the overall profit. In the derived optimal sorting and recycling strategy, high-density polyethylene is recycled to produce downgrade plastic; low-density polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene are recycled as pyrolysis oil; and polyethylene terephthalate is recycled to produce refuse plastic fuel. The derived optimal case can significantly increase the overall profit by about 3,137% (i.e., 35 US$/1 kg of recycled plastic), and 492% (i.e., 29 US$/1 kg of recycled plastic) compared to conventional case in South Korea and Japan respectively.

Introduction

     The demand for plastics has rapidly increased in many industries because of their versatility, and easy production. Consequently, plastic waste is discharged in massive quantities; estimates of plastic waste discharged into rivers, lakes, and seas is 9–23 million t per year globally (Borrelle et al., 2020; Masuda et al., 2001). Thus, the importance of plastic waste recycling is increasing (Shah et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2020). Plastic waste is a mixture of different types, so it must be sorted into before it is recycled (Gundupalli et al., 2017; Hearn and Ballard, 2005; Lim and Cho, 2003). Economically-viable sorting and recycling of plastic will yield a cheap and abundant source of valuable chemicals and renewable energy (Gadaleta et al., 2020). However, current systems to sort and recycle plastic waste are not optimized, so their costs are high. Thus, only 27.2 wt% of plastic waste is recycled, whereas 36.4 wt% is landfilled, and 36.4 wt% is incinerated (Vieira et al., 2022). Therefore, the soil and air pollution according to the landfilled plastic and the significant amount of SOx, NOx, and CO2 emitted in the incineration of waste plastic is serious. The types of recycled plastic have different uses depending on the product (e.g., downgrade plastic, pyrolysis oil, and refuse plastic fuel) that is produced (Kim et al., 2020; Krauklis et al., 2021; Shaha et al., 2020; Yaqoob et al., 2021). Methods to recycle plastic waste are classified into material, chemical, and thermal types (Zhuo and Levendis, 2014). They have very different capital and operating costs according to the throughput of the plastic waste of each method (Huang et al., 2002). Therefore, to improve plastic waste recycling, it is crucial to derive optimal sorting and recycling strategy for plastic waste that indicate which plastics will be sorted to be recycled and how the plastic will be recycled according to each recycling method considering economic feasibility.

Conclusion

     This study found an optimal strategy to sort and recycle plastic waste as a renewable energy resource for maximizing economic feasibility and mitigation of environmental pollution caused by landfilled plastic and air pollutants according to incineration of plastic. This study makes two major contributions to the literature. First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first attempt to optimize the plastic waste sorting and recycling system by deriving an optimal sorting and recycling strategy to improve the recycling of for plastic waste as a renewable energy resource maximizing economic feasibility and mitigating of environmental pollution. Also, the results allow us to increase the recycling of plastic waste by maximizing the overall profit of the plastic waste sorting and recycling system. In the derived optimal sorting and recycling strategy, HDPE is recycled to produce downgrade plastic; LDPE, PP and PS are recycled as pyrolysis oil; and PET is recycled to produce refuse plastic fuel. The derived optimal case can increase overall profit by ∼ 3,137% compared to CCS, and 492% compared to CCJ, and also emission of air pollutants. Thus, this study provides valuable insight into the many recycling industries of waste plastics to achieve clean production, cost-effectiveness, and environmental protection. In many literatures, strategies such as operating condition optimization were proposed to reduce the cost of each sorting method. Thus, in further study, it is crucial to consider the detailed proposed strategies in deriving the optimal solution to maximize economic feasibility.