Auburn researchers are working on ways to convert waste plastics and coal into viable fuels a technology that once perfected will reduce the amount of plastics buried in landfills and cut U.S. dependency on foreign oil.
Through the Consortium for Fossil Fuel Liquefaction Science (comprised of AU, West Virginia University and the universities of Kentucky, Pittsburgh and Utah) work is under way to combine coal and other fossil fuels such as waste oil with plastics, tire rubber and paper materials to produce fuel oils and transportation fuels.
Six faculty members at Auburn including Christine Curtis, James Guin, Mahmoud ElHalwagi and Ray Tarrer of the chemical engineering faculty, with S.D. Worley and Charles Neely of the Department of Chemistry are working on the project.
Curtis says her research focus is on the liquefaction of waste plastics and tires.
Liquefaction, which involves turning materials from a solid to a liquid state, is not simply melting them, according to Curtis. It is a process in which the chemical compounds, or polymers, are broken down into smaller molecules that can be used as fuels.
"Plastics don't liquefy well, so catalytic treatment, using a cracking or hydrocracking catalyst, is needed," Curtis says. "Coal, however, does not always perform well with these catalysts, so what we're trying to do is preliquefy the plastics and use the liquid portion as a solvent in the coal with a catalyst that does perform well with coal. That particular twostage process looks quite promising."
The materials are combined in a reaction chamber with hydrogen gas at a high temperature about 440 degrees C to break down the polymers and remove the unwanted metals present, Curtis says.
"Depending on the materials that we start with and the degree of further refining, we can obtain a gamut of fuel products, from solvents to diesel fuels to gasolines and high quality jet fuels," she said.
In addition to its environmental and economic aesthetics, the waste coprocessing technology would result in a new industry providing a new source of domestic fuels, according to Curtis."It would be desirable to have these coprocessing plants located at a refinery," she said. "That way the product from the coprocessing of these plastics and coal could be fed directly to the refinery for further upgrading.
"Even with twostage liquefaction, the fuel will not be of the quality wanted without further refining to get a desirable and marketable product."
According to Department of Energy, Americans generate 90 million tons of waste paper and plastic, 350 million waste tires and 1.4 billion gallons of waste oil each year. Estimates are that these materials coprocessed with coal could produce 300 million barrels of usable fuel oil essentially offsetting one month of current U.S. oil imports.
"This type of process probably is what we (as a country) should be looking at rather than imports," Curtis said.
Additional information on research within the College of Engineering is available on our web site at http://www.eng.auburn.edu. In addition to home pages for each of our research centers, departmental web sites include more details on faculty, laboratory and computer facilities, and related information.
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