2022-2023 AIChE Student Design Competition: Closing critical gaps to enable a circular plastics economy

Abstract

For our senior design project, we completed the AIChE student design competition project statement for the 2022-2023 school year. For the first part of this project, we were tasked with designing a Pyoil purification unit to treat a stream of pyrolyzed plastic waste. This unit would use a distillation scheme to separate the Pyoil into four different products: Py gas, light cut, medium cut, and heavy cut. The products of the Pyoil purification unit would be sent to a steam cracker to produce ethylene to make more plastic products. We had to design and size our equipment and calculate any costs associated with the design. We also had to include process safety design, calculations, and analyses to support the safety of our design. For the second part of our project, we had to provide a review and a list of recommendations for a plastic sorting facility in Bali that would address 3 gaps: quantity, quality, and affordability.