Conversion of Styrofoam Waste into Alternative Fuel through Hydrocracking Process

The use of styrofoam both in industries and households has increased so that gives an impact on the amount of waste generated. The styrofoam waste takes at least 500 years to decompose. It gives serious impacts to environment and contributes greatly to global warming. Hydrocracking technology is capable to process styrofoam waste as feedstock that has a long chain structure into fuels and chemicals with shorter chain structure. The use of catalysts would be more beneficial because it can lead to lower operating conditions of the hydrocracking process. Natural zeolite is cheap and abundant in Indonesia, hence its use as a catalyst is to lower the cost of production. The natural zeolite from Klaten, Indonesia was refluxed in HCl 6N for 30 minutes and dried in an oven, produced the activated natural zeolite (Z). For bi-functional catalysts, the activated natural zeolite was loaded with nickel (Ni) and molybdenum (Mo) metal to increase the activity, selectivity and thermal stability for hydrocracking process. The catalyst sample was heated in a microwave and reduced by hydrogen gas stream, produced Ni-Mo/Z. Hydrocracking process was carried out over activated natural zeolite supported Ni-Mo metal with 20 mL/minutes of hydrogen flow rate for 1 hour of reaction time at various temperatures to determine the optimum condition. The greater condition was reached at 400 °C. Conversion of styrofoam waste through hydrocracking process at 400 °C produced 36.74% of liquid yield that has the structure of hydrocarbon like fuels. This study found the most remarkable potential of the environment, through the use of styrofoam waste into alternative fuels and chemicals to become applied commercially on a large scale.