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.