Environmental impact of different scenarios for the pyrolysis of contaminated mixed plastic waste García García, Guillermo Martín Lara, María Ángeles Calero De Hoces, Francisca Mónica Blázquez García, Gabriel Plastic waste Pyrolysis Waste management Landfill LCA Life-Cycle Assessment This work has received funding from the project PID2019-108826RB-I00/SRA (State Research Agency)/10.13039/501100011033, the project B-RNM-78-UGR20 (FEDER/Junta de Andalucía-Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades) and the project P20_00167 (FEDER/Junta de Andalucía-Ministry of Economy, Transformation, Industry, and Universities). Guillermo Garcia-Garcia is grateful for the grant “Juan de la Cierva Incorporación” funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and “ESF Investing in your future”, and the Grant ‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship’ with Grant agreement ID: 101052284. We acknowledge funding for open access provided by Universidad de Granada/CBUA. Every day, large amounts of plastic are disposed of all over the world. Most of it is not recycled and ends up polluting the environment. Therefore, waste collection and management must be improved to reduce the environmental impact caused by plastic waste. Pyrolysis has been explored as an alternative to treat contaminated mixed plastic waste and obtain valuable materials, such as oil and char. These materials can effectively substitute fuel and activated carbon, respectively. However, the pyrolysis process also has a significant environmental impact, mainly due to gas emissions. It is important to quantify this environmental impact and compare it with alternative treatment methods to identify the best management strategy for contaminated mixed plastic waste. This study applies the Life-Cycle Assessment methodology to evaluate the environmental impact and compare it with the conventional practice of landfilling. Three different pyrolysis scenarios are considered: one in which the char is used as fuel and therefore combusted, and two in which the char is activated by carbon dioxide and potassium hydroxide, respectively, to be used as an adsorbent. Our results show that pyrolysis is environmentally superior to landfilling for the treatment of contaminated mixed plastic waste. This is mainly due to the production of oil, which substitutes commercial diesel, the production of which has a high environmental impact. Pyrolysis followed by char combustion has the lowest environmental impact of all pyrolysis scenarios considered. 2024-04-03T10:48:23Z 2024-04-03T10:48:23Z 2024-02-21 info:eu-repo/semantics/article García García, Guillermo et al. Environmental impact of different scenarios for the pyrolysis of contaminated mixed plastic waste. Green Chem., 2024, 26, 3853. https://doi.org/10.1039/d3gc04396g https://hdl.handle.net/10481/90361 10.1039/d3gc04396g eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Royal Society of Chemistry