As an essential part of the circular economy, incineration can recover energy and decrease the volume of solid waste. But incineration cannot eliminate all of the organic materials in the solid waste. As a main part of solid waste, plastic will be incinerated into microplastics or plastic-char. This study was aimed to elucidate the role of plastic-char produced by the incineration processes in the transformation of persistent organic pollutants. The polyethylene terephthalate was used as precursor to simulate the production of plastic-char in the process of waste incineration. Besides, the iron was taken into consideration as a representative specie of metal in the solid waste. Fe could accelerate the disintegration of plastic and enlarge the specific surface aera of plastic-char. The batch adsorption experiments of 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2) with plastic-char were carried out under various experimental parameters (pyrolysis temperature, the amount of Fe doped, pH). The isothermal sorption model demonstrated that the EE2 sorption by plastic-char is a heterogeneous multilayer adsorption process. And the existence of Fe greatly enhanced the adsorption capacity as well as the photochemistry behavior of plastic-char. Quenching experiments proved that the electron transfer between triplet state of plastic-char and Ferric was the rate-limited step for the generation of reactive species and hydroxyl radical was the predominant reactive specie contributing on EE2 photodegradation. This study not only revealed the generation process of plastic-char in the incineration, but also elucidated the role of plastic-char discharged into the environment as bottom ash in the natural transformation of persistence organic pollutant.

Adsorption and photochemistry behavior of plastic-char produced in plastic incineration processes

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.