Design and Development of an Infrared Heater For Waste Plastic Gasification

This paper outlines the design, manufacture and analysis of a far infrared ceramic heater for plastic gasification purposes.  The study includes the theoretical overview of the mathematical modelling of the far infrared ceramic heater. This study gives a novel energy conversion system of waste plastic materials. In this system, waste plastics are converted into gaseous fuel by gasification using infrared gasifier system. The derived gaseous fuels can then be used in fuel cell for purposes of electricity production. In this study two types of waste plastics (high density polyethylene, low density polyethylene) have been used as feedstock for the infrared gasifier. Analysis of the spectral properties of the waste plastics has been performed. Gasification of plastic waste as carbonaceous material, basic reactions during the gasification of plastics and gasification results has been analysed. The ceramic infrared heaters developed in this research are fully functional and all test results obtained are accurate to a very fair degree. The results obtained from the gasification experiment shows that using infrared heaters on gasification is practically sound because of significant advantages of infrared heating compared to the landfill and incineration. The work is intended to develop a low-cost ceramic infrared heater solution to be used in plastic waste gasification