Coprocessing of Waste Plastics with Other Raw Materials

2 COPROCESSING OF WASTE PLASTICS WITH OTHER RAW MATERIALS 

Light cycle oil, a highly aromatic ECC product (e.g. 67% aromatics content) can be used as solvent for PS and PS-BD (polystyrene-butadiene) mixture, component of synthetic rubber. Arandes et al. [37] proved that this feed can be further successfully thermally or catalyticaUy cracked, giving mainly gasoline fractions. They contain a high quantity of valuable components for petrochemistry, styrene and C4 olefins. 

Gebauer et al. [38] suggest visbreaking of waste plastics with vacuum residue. This is a thermal process, applied in refineries in order to convert partially atmospheric vacuum residue and decrease viscosity and melting temperature. According to the authors, addition of 5% of waste plastics in laboratory tests does not influence noticeably the process parameters and final products properties. As in the case of LCO and VGO fractions the application of vacuum residue and mixture of waste plastics is applicable in refineries. 

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