A review on co-pyrolysis of biomass with plastics and tires: recent progress, catalyst development, and scaling up potential

With increases in population and industrialization, global energy demand is increasing rapidly and resulting in various environmental challenges related to fossil fuel consumption. These challenges have made it imperative to look for alternative means of environmentally sustainable energy production, such as the thermal degradation of biomass. Biofuels obtained from pyrolysis have the potential to be substituted for fossil fuels, but one of the major barriers to utilization of pyrolysis oil is the presence of oxygenated compounds. An approach to overcome this is to co-pyrolyze the biomass with hydrogen-rich feedstocks such as plastic and tire wastes. Studies have shown that exists a synergistic relationship between plastics/tires and biomass as well as resulting products from co-pyrolysis have higher heating value along with improved bio-oil properties. This paper discusses the current progress on the co-pyrolysis of biomass with waste plastics/tires and their synergistic interactions for high grade fuel production. Co-pyrolysis studies done on pilot-scale have also been discussed in this review.