Polypropylene and rendering fat degrading to value-added chemicals by direct liquefaction and fast-pyrolysis

In this work, the direct liquefaction of polypropylene and rendering fat mixtures was performed by using light magnesium oxide (MgO) as catalyst. Polypropylene and rendering fat mixtures were tested in ratio of 10:0, 8:2, 6:4, 4:6, 2:8, and 0:10 (w/w) with 2 g of MgO and 50 g of tetralin as solvent and rendering fat:tetralin ratios of 10:50, 20:40, 30:30, 40:20, 50:10, and 60:10 w/w for the low temperature pyrolysis. Direct liquefaction was tested at 420 °C for 1 h, under nitrogen (1 MPa) in an autoclave. Furthermore, fast pyrolysis was performed to degrade these raw materials to light molecules such as ethylene and propylene. The raw materials and products were analyzed by a combination of several techniques: inductively coupled plasma thermal analyses, infrared spectroscopy, refractive index, elemental analyses (C, H, N, S%), and gas chromatography provided by a flame ionization detector (GC-FID), further analyzed by simulated distillation and refinery gas analysis (RGA).