Utilisation of Various Hydro-Carbon-Based Wastes by Thermo-catalytic Conversion

The global need for energy and raw materials is constantly on the rise as mankind’s technology progresses. Due to more and more environmental load and fossil energy carriers exhausted, processes designed for thermo-catalytic conversion of various hydrocarbon-based wastes (plastics- and rubber waste, biomasses) and fuels with a low calorific value (lignite, brown coal) have come into focus in the last decades. The essence of these processes is that solid raw materials forming long carbon chains can be converted at medium-high temperatures (410–450 °C) by means of a special reactor system into more valuable hydrocarbon fractions of liquid and gas state such as petrol-, gas oil-, fuel gas-type products. We examined in our work, how low-quality rubber waste and/or brown coal, plastic waste raw materials can be converted into better quality products—of primarily liquid state. The problem raising a number of open points is a complicated optimisation issue as various heterogeneous components and their content in aggressive contaminants (sulphur, chlorine, nitrogen, oxygen, oxides, carbonates etc.) can largely affect decomposition kinetics thus the quality and quantity of hydrocarbon products formed so as well. This publication covers the system modelling techniques in detail that can be used as a foundation for the basis of mathematical modelling of high-complexity technical systems.