Recycling Used Pure Water Sachets and Their Blends With Waste Coconut Shells As Carbon Resources in Iron Making

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Recycling postconsumer plastics is currently a huge environmental headache globally. In Ghana, several thousands of tonnes of used pure water sachets are daily discarded indiscriminately. In this work the production of metallic iron from iron oxide using blends of used pure water sachets (PWS) and coconut shells (cocos nucifera) as reducing agent have been performed through experiments conducted in a horizontal tube furnace. Composite pellets were formed from mixtures of iron oxide and carbonaceous materials consisting of chars of coconut shells (CNS), PWS and three blends of CNS-PWS. The iron oxide-carbonaceous material composites were heated very rapidly in a laboratory scale horizontal tube furnace at 1500°C in a continuous stream of pure argon and the off gas was analysed continuously using an infrared (IR) gas analyser and a gas chromatographic (GC) analyser equipped with a thermal conductivity detector (TCD). Elemental analyses of samples of the reduced metal were performed chemically for its carbon and oxygen contents using a LECO carbon/sulphur and LECO oxygen/nitrogen analysers, respectively. The extent of reduction after ten minutes and the level of carburisation were determined for each carbonaceous reductant. The results indicate that metallic iron can be produced effectively from iron oxides using CNS, PWS and blends of these carbonaceous materials as reductants. It was revealed that the extent of reduction improved significantly when CNS was blended with PWS. The results also revealed that blending of the carbonaceous materials has a beneficial effect on the environment through decreasing carbon dioxide emissions.

Keywords: Recycling, Sachets, Waste, Coconut shells, Iron making