Pemanfaatan Sampah Plastik Menjadi Fraksi Naphtha Sebagai Bahan Baku Alternatif Petrokimia

Abstract

Indonesia was producing 64 million ton plastic waste each year. These massive amounts of plastic waste will create negative impacts on an environment such as endangering marine ecosystem with almost 3.2 million ton of plastic waste ends up in the sea each year. To reduce an environmental damage caused by plastics waste, a solution to properly recycling this waste is needed. This research has created a recycling method that allows the dissolve of polyethylene plastic bonds into hydrocarbon products. In this research, the objective is to get naphtha product carried out in the process named thermal cracking which intends to break down the complex hydrocarbons in plastic into lighter molecules to obtain hydrocarbons range between C₅-C₁₁. The process carried out under conditions of 400^oC and 4 kg/cm². The naphtha produced from a thermal cracking process has gone through several reliable standard test methods, such as ASTM D 4052 (Density @15^oC), ASTM D 323 (Reid Vapor Pressure), and ASTM D 86 (Atmospherics Distillation). Based on the results, it was found that naphtha product recovered from plastic waste had the same critical parameters with petroleum naphtha, as evidenced by the results of 720 kg/m³ density, 70 kPa RVP, and has boiling range at 52-170^oC.