Thermal degradation of polyethylene waste and jute fiber in oxidative environment and recovery of oil containing phytol and free fatty acids

• A self designed reactor for the effective thermal degradation of polyethylene waste.
• All the thermal degradation experiments were performed in oxidative environment.
• The recovered oil was screened against SV, AV, EV, % glycerol and % FFA.

The thermal degradation of the mixture of waste HDPE & LDPE defined as WPB, in the ratio of 3:1 by wt% and the mixture of jute, HDPE & LDPE defined as JFWPB in the ratio of 1:3:1 by wt%, was carried out in a self designed, laboratory scale, stainless steel reactor in the oxidative environment. The reactor was heated up to 180 °C with a heating rate of 1 °C/min, by using the digital temperature controller. The recovered liquid yield from WPB was reported less than 5% which had been improved upto 56% with JFWPB. The comparatively FTIR analysis of both the samples revealed that unsaturated hydrocarbon fragments were transformed in to the oxygenated products which were confirmed by GC/MS analysis and identified as a phytol, free fatty acids and silica derivatives by using NIST library. The saponification value, acid value, ester value, % free fatty acids and % glycerol for OilJFWPB was found close to the coconut oil.