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Chemical Energy From Wastes (Cefw) ? Employing Gasification & Pyrolysis To Produce Biofuels

Kevin John Whiting

The EU Waste Hierarchy positions recycling and energy recovery
from waste above landfill. Thermal processes have the
capability to achieve recycling of useful and beneficial resources
(materials and energy) from various waste streams, which
otherwise would be lost. This is consistent with the European
Union’s Circular Economy Directive. Waste plastics to biofuel
projects are beginning to gain traction in the energy industry
around the world, with rising awareness of the environmental
damage caused by single-use plastics and poor social recycling
habits leading researchers to turn to alternative methods for
recovering beneficial resources from the ever-increasing volume
of wasted plastics. Such projects can utilise the chemical energy
stored in the material’s hydrocarbon structure to create chemicals,
including transport fuels and precursors to produce more
plastics, the latter generally considered optimal from a resource
efficiency perspective. This paper reviews the potential recovery
opportunities from applying thermal technologies (gasification
and pyrolysis) to a number of waste streams in order to recover
useful resources by converting the wastes into syngas from
which beneficially useful chemicals, including green transport
fuels, can be produced as an alternative to energy and power.
The technical and economic challenges of this approach are
also considered and the technologies under development and
those that exist commercially are discussed.