You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
The use of clay from the South-South region of Nigeria as catalyst for the pyrolytic conversion of waste plastics to liquid fuel has been inadequately covered. Therefore, the aim of this research is to produce zeolite catalyst from mined clay deposits located at Okada site in Edo State, Nigeria. The physical properties of this clay were compared with samples from Olumoye, Ogbese and Ikpeshi sites all in Edo State. The procedures involved the beneficiation of the raw clay and calcination at 850°C, to transform the clay to a more reactive form. This reactive clay was treated with sulphuric acid to obtain a high ratio of silica-alumina necessary for the zeolite synthesis. Identification of the crystalline phases by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), chemical/elemental compositions by X-ray Fluorescence (XRF)/Energy Dispersive Spectroscopic analyses (EDS), surface morphological changes by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and molecular vibration of units by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrophotometry (FT-IR) were done. Results showed that clay samples from Okada sites had the highest density of 1.219g/cm3 when compared with samples from Olumoye (0.92g/cm3), Ikpeshi (1.0768g/cm3) and Ogbese (1.2016g/cm3). Furthermore, analysis showed that samples from Olumoye had the highest porosity levels (38%) when compared with samples from Okada (33%), Ogbese (35%) and Ikpeshi (29%). This is because of their differences in pore volumes of the samples. Similarly, the moisture content of samples from Olumoye (83%) and Ogbese (86%) were higher than those of Okada (72%) and Ikpeshi (73%). Considering the 71.7%:13.9% (i.e. 5.9 : 1) Si:Al ratio, and the negligible amount of iron (Fe+) impurities, the Okada clay sample shows potential for synthesis of zeolite catalyst used for plastic wastes pyrolysis. This is an important research topic with applications in building constructions, agriculture, chemistry and chemical engineering. Therefore, these findings would be of interests to construction engineers, chemists, agriculturists, and chemical engineers.
