In South Korea, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of single-use face masks are discarded every day, creating a huge surge in plastic pollution. In a recent study, a team of researchers led by Korea University investigated the feasibility and potential environmental benefits of converting discarded surgical masks into burnable fuel via a process called pyrolysis. Their findings pave the way to a novel waste-to-energy upcycling approach, which could help meet some of the UN’s sustainable development goals.
The recent study published in Bioresource Technology analyzed the possibility of converting surgical masks into value-added chemicals through pyrolysis.
While the pyrolysis of polypropylene—the main component of surgical masks—has already been studied in detail, masks usually contain other fillers that could affect their pyrolysis behavior. Thus, the research team had to carefully analyze how the pyrolysis conditions affected the obtained products, which came in gaseous, liquid, and solid forms. To this end, they ran multiple experiments at different pyrolysis temperatures and with different heating rates, capturing all the outputs and subjecting them to thorough characterization.
In particular, one set of pyrolysis conditions yielded a carbon-rich and oxygen-deficient liquid oil as the main product. Further analyses revealed that this oil had a high heating value of 43.5 MJ/kg, which is only slightly lower than that of diesel fuel and gasoline. In other words, the results showed that surgical masks can be converted into a burnable fuel that can in turn be used, for example, to generate electricity.
the researchers conducted a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of their proposed methodology to better understand its pros and cons, in this case, the discarded masks marked the beginning of the cycle while the electricity generated using the obtained fuel marked its end.
The results of the LCA were promising, indicating that the conversion of waste masks into electricity through pyrolysis offered better performance than most conventional waste management approaches on several fronts, including less CO2 emissions, less terrestrial ecotoxicity, and less phosphorous emissions.
Overall, the findings of this study indicate that pyrolysis is an attractive option to solve the problems posed by discarded surgical waste masks, paving the way to sustainable waste management, while generating energy and reducing our environmental impact.
Tags: COVID-19, South Korea, surgical masks
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