Thermal Degradation and Subsequent Catalytic Upgrading

This type of process is the preferred choice for treating plastic wastes containing a high proportion of components that may affect negatively the catalyst performance. The occurrence of a previous thermal step allows for the removal of many of these components previously to the catalytic treatment. 

Although the great majority of the aforementioned processes for giving added value to the product of a previous thermal cracking have been addressed towards the production of higher quality fuels, other alternatives have been proposed yielding completely different 

Other interesting products that can be obtained from waste plastics using combined thermal and catalytic processes are alkylaromatic compounds, which possess industrial applications as automatic transmission fluids (ATF), detergents (linear alkyl benzenes, LAB), and improvers of cetane number in diesel fuels [104]. The process uses as raw material the olefins generated in a previous step of thermal and catalytic cracking, which represent a cheaper source of olefins alternative to the currently existing ones. No special details about the conditions applied for the olefin production are indicated, the emphasis being focused on the alkylation step. Alkylation catalysts comprise conventional Lewis 

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