Plastic Pyrolysis Reactor | mysimulator.uk

Feedstock

Reactor Controls

Kiln temperature 500 °C

Process speed 1.0×

Live Readouts

Remaining solid

100.0%

Process time

0.0 min

Rate constant k

—

Half-life t½

—

Product Mass Balance

Feed 100.0% Oil 0.0% Gas 0.0% Char 0.0%

How it works

Pyrolysis chemically recycles mixed or contaminated plastic that mechanical recycling can't handle — shredded feedstock is heated in an oxygen-free rotary kiln until the long polymer chains crack into shorter hydrocarbons. This model treats decomposition as a first-order thermal reaction driven by the Arrhenius equation:

k(T) = A · exp(−Eₐ / R·T)      dm/dt = −k · m

where A is the pre-exponential (attempt) factor, Eₐ the apparent activation energy, R = 8.314 J/(mol·K), and T the absolute kiln temperature. Small changes in T swing k by orders of magnitude — the hallmark "threshold" behaviour of Arrhenius kinetics you'll see below 400 °C.

Feedstock — PE, PP and PS each carry their own (Eₐ, A), tuned so the qualitative ranking matches TGA studies: PS backbone unzips to styrene monomer at the lowest temperatures, PP's tertiary carbons make it next-easiest to crack, and PE's simple saturated chain is the most thermally stable of the three.
Temperature — sets k(T) and shifts the product split: higher temperatures crack more of the condensable vapour into permanent gas via secondary reactions, so the oil fraction falls as the gas fraction rises. Char stays a small, roughly constant residue for these polyolefins/polystyrene.
Process speed — a clock multiplier (and kiln RPM) so a multi-minute batch is watchable; it does not change the physics, only how fast simulated time passes.
At every instant, decomposed mass is split into oil/gas/char at that instant's temperature-dependent ratio and accumulated — so solid + oil + gas + char always sums to the original feed mass.

Kinetic constants here are illustrative, tuned for a watchable timescale, but the functional form and the relative ordering of the three polymers are consistent with published single-step decomposition studies.

Solid feedstock Pyrolysis gas Pyrolysis oil

⚠ Couldn't load the 3D engineThree.js failed to load from the CDN. Check your connection and reload.