The Hamburg Fluidized-bed Pyrolysis Process to Recycle Polymer Wastes and Tires

The Hamburg Fluidized-bed Pyrolysis Process to Recycle Polymer Wastes and Tires 

Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Bundesstr. 45, 20146 Hamburg, Germany 

After the first oil crisis in 1975, there was great interest in feedstock recycling of polymers to recover oil and gas from this hydrocarbon source. Another goal was to protect the environment from landfilling of plastic materials that decompose very slowly. 

Polystyrene bottles were pyrolyzed by the Japan Fluid Cracking process (JFC) in a fluid sand bed reactor of 500 mm diameter and with a capacity of 1 t/day [2]. The oily products were contaminated by oxidized compounds. 

In the years from 1973 to 2005, different size fluidized-bed reactors were built at the Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry, continuously working with plastics throughput of 50 g/h (LWS 1), 500 g/h (LWS 2), 2 kg/H (LWS 3 -h 4), 3 kg/h (LWS 5), a small pilot plant of 10-30 kg/h (TWSl) for plastics, and a pilot plant of 100-200 kg/h for whole tires (TWS2) [3-5]. All reactors were heated indirectly, the small laboratory sizes electrically from the outside, and the pilot plants by heating tubes with incineration 

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