Lumped Kinetics for Homogeneous Reactions of n-Hexadecane and n-Decene as Model Compounds for PE Pyrolysis Primary Tars

Osvalda Senneca and Teresa Tucciullo
Additional contact information
Osvalda Senneca: ’Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie per l’Energia e la Mobilità Sostenibili (STEMS), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, P.le V.Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy
Teresa Tucciullo: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica dei Materiali e della Produzione Industriale, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, P.le V.Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: The focus of this paper is to establish a lumped kinetic scheme for secondary reactions of tar produced from pyrolysis of plastics or polymer-based wastes. Notably, the focus is not on the detailed yield of all reaction intermediates and products but on the propensity to form soot. Based on the assumption that that primary tar from pyrolysis of plastic wastes is mostly formed by aliphatics which can undergo progressive aromatization to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and soot, a reaction network with 198 species and 6307 reactions proposed by Ranzi and coworkers was lumped into a very simple five reaction mechanism. The lumped kinetic model has been used to predict PAHs and soot formation in different conditions and proved to be a good alternative to comprehensive kinetic models up for relatively low temperature and short residence times (of up to 1 min at 1200 K, up to 1 s at 1400 K). At higher temperature/longer residence times, the simplified model still provides reasonable qualitative trends but the amount of PAHs and soot is underestimated. The timescale of aromatization under inert conditions appears similar for all the alkanes and alkenes examined and also the yields in main reaction products seem to scale well with the number of carbon and hydrogen atoms of the parent alkane/alkene. Evolution of the young aliphatic tar into large aromatics is prevented as long as gaseous oxygen being available for oxidation. The lumped kinetic model has been used to highlight the effect of different modes of oxygen feeding and of incomplete mixing of fuel and oxygen on the formation of PAH and soot.

Keywords: pyrolysis; combustion; lumped kinetics; tar; soot; plastics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/20/5466/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/20/5466/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:20:p:5466-:d:431388

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().