Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228

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Carbon Resources Conversion

journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/carbon-resources-conversion

Microwave-assisted pyrolysis of waste plastics for their resource reuse: A

technical review
Xuan Hu a, Dachao Ma a, c, *, Guangyi Zhang b, d, Mengxue Ling a, Qiaoling Hu a, Kangyi Liang a,
Jiacheng Lu a, Yifan Zheng a
a
School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
b
School of Ecology and Environment, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China
c
Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
d
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Rapidly increasing plastics have been used and finally become wastes, resulting in increasing pressures to the
Review environment. Microwave-assisted pyrolysis is a promising technology for converting organic wastes as waste
Waste plastics plastics into value-added products. At present, many works on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics have been
Microwave-assisted pyrolysis
published, but the achievements, challenges, and future directions of microwave-assisted pyrolysis of waste
Challenges
plastics have not been well summarized and discussed. In this work, the principle of microwave-assisted pyrolysis
technology is introduced. Then, the progress of its application to recover useful products from plastics is
reviewed and discussed in terms of key parameters including microwave power, pyrolysis temperature, reaction
time, types of catalyst, microwave absorbents and feedstock mixing ratio. Especially, the yields and properties of
the produced oil, gas and char are correlated with the process parameters. Finally, the existing challenges and
prospects of disposal/reuse of waste plastics by microwave-assisted pyrolysis technology are discussed.

1. Introduction effective management and recycling for waste plastics.

With advantages of strong corrosion resistance, low manufacturing
cost, durability, light weight, good plasticity and insulation, plastics
have been widely used in various fields such as agriculture, industry,
construction, packaging, and defense industries. As shown in Fig. 1, the
global production of the plastic is keep increasing annually by 4%. Ac­
cording to statistics, 9.2 billion tons of plastic is accumulatively pro­
duced by 2017 [1]. As estimated, the accumulative plastic production
will reach 34 billion tons by the end of 2050 with over 500 million tons
per year [2]. Unfortunately, around 50% of plastic is disposed without
recycling [3,4].
The plastic life stream from manufacturing to disposal will emit a
huge amount of greenhouse gases (GHG), occupying 4.5% of global
emission, which will consume 10%-13% of the carbon emission quota by
2050 [6]. What’s more, with approximately 8–11 million tons of plastics
dumping into the oceans every year, microplastics in the oceans have
kept being absorbed and accumulated by animals, eventually ingested
by human through the food chain [7]. Therefore, it is crucial to make
In recent years, many technologies have been developed to recycle
waste plastics which can be classified into four types: Primary recycling
refers to transforming recyclable waste plastics into products directly.
Secondary recycling, also known as mechanical recycling, is a physical
method to convert waste plastics into products through sorting,
grinding, cleaning and extrusion [8,9]. Tertiary recycling uses chemical
and thermochemical methods to recover various components of waste
plastics, converting polymers into monomers or fuels. Quaternary
recycling means recovering energy from waste plastics by incineration
[10,11]. Pyrolysis can crack plastic into high-value products such as
liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gases for energy or further chemical re­
finery [12–14]. It can reduce the carbon footprint since the whole pro­
cedure emits less detrimental gases than traditional incineration and
landfill [15–17]. Thus pyrolysis has attracted a lot of attention.
The conventional pyrolysis technologies normally use thermal heat
to heat up the feedstock such as coal [18–20], biomass [21–23], waste
plastics [24,25]. The heat energy to stimulate the reaction can be ob­
tained from partial combustion of the feedstock, while it will emit CO2.

* Corresponding author at: School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, No. 100, Daxue East Road, Nanning 530004, China.
E-mail address: ma.d.aa@gxu.edu.cn (D. Ma).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crcon.2023.03.002
Received 3 October 2022; Received in revised form 25 February 2023; Accepted 2 March 2023
Available online 5 March 2023
2588-9133/© 2023 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
X. Hu et al.
The external heat carriers such as hot nitrogen, steam, limestone and etc.
can also heat up the feedstock to start the reaction. However, due to the
heat and mass transferring limitation in the conventional heat method,
the energy efficiency is low and the products fraction cannot be well
controlled. The low heat conductivity of plastics makes the mass and
heat transferring worse. Microwave-assisted pyrolysis has become a
promising technology as it can realize fast, selective heating and is easy
to control the reaction conditions [26,27].
Nowadays, literatures on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics are
intensively published to explore the changes of yields and properties of
products with reaction conditions and types of plastics. The challenges,
and limitations as well as future directions of this technology especially
for waste plastics are rarely reported. This paper reviews the progress of
microwave-assisted pyrolysis in treating waste plastics and the pros­
pects. The product distribution of different types of plastics under mi­
crowave is summarized. The parameters affecting the microwave-
assisted pyrolysis process, such as microwave power, temperature,
residence time, and catalyst are evaluated. The study devotes to retro­
spect extensively the recent works on microwave-assisted technology as
a profitable method applied to the pyrolysis of waste plastics.
2. Principle of microwave-assisted pyrolysis
As shown in Fig. 2, microwave radiation is a kind of electromagnetic
radiation with a wavelength from 1 cm to 1 m and a frequency from 0.3
to 300 GHz [28,29]. At present, microwave is widely used in various
fields such as radar [30], communication [28], household heating oven
[31], drying equipment [32] and etc.. In order to avoid interference
between telecommunication and cellular frequencies, each of these ap­
plications has unique wave band. Generally speaking, radar trans­
missions use wavelengths which range from 0.01 m to 0.25 m, while
telecommunications use the rest of the wavelengths [26]. Frequencies of
915 MHz (λ = 32.8 cm) and 2450 MHz (λ = 12.25 cm) are used for
industry and household appliances, respectively [33].
As shown in Fig. 3, conventional heating usually heat up the feed­
stock particles on the surface firstly. Then the energy will transfer into
the center by heat conduction. Thus, the materials with low thermal
conductivity such as plastic, wood will perform low energy efficiency in
conventional pyrolysis. Differently, microwave energy interacts with
feedstock by three ways: (1) Highly conductive materials regarded as
conductor, will reflect microwaves; (2) Microwaves can directly pene­
trate insulators such as glass, plastic and ceramics without being
absorbed; (3) Some dielectric mediums (e.g., water, wood, etc.) can
adsorb microwave energy, consequently can be heated up from the in­
side of the particle in the microwave field [34,35]. Therefore, the mi­
crowave heating can break through the limitation of heat conduction.
Based on the movement of the molecules, microwaves heat up the ma­
terial through three main mechanisms. The first mechanism is dipole
polarization, which generates heat through high-speed rotation and
Fig. 1. Global plastics production capacity change trend [5].
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Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228
collision between polarized molecules. The second mechanism is the
interface polarization, also known as space charge polarization or
Maxwell-Wagner polarization. Due to the conductivity or dielectric
constant is nonuniform in the medium, interface polarization will occur
as accumulation and inhomogeneous distribution of free charge. The
third mechanism is the conduction mechanism, which the microwaves
motivate the moving of free ions in the medium to generate current. At
the same time, the movement causes the collision among ions, thereby
generate heat energy [36,37].
3. Microwave reactors for plastic pyrolysis
At present, the research on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of waste
plastics is almost carried out in laboratory-scale batch-type reaction
devices as shown in Figs. 4-5. The reactors are usually consisted of mi­
crowave generator, reactor with sealed cover to prevent the leaking of
radiation, and collection system outside of the reactor to separately
collect liquid and gaseous products. The capacity for those reactors is
mostly less than 20 g/batch [38–40]. Recently, a continuous microwave-
assisted pyrolysis (CMAP) system has been developed as shown in Fig. 6.
It has a silicon carbide downdraft mixed bed with a total microwave
output power of 9 kW. The feedstock can be stored in the hopper and
continuously fed by an auger feeder with capacity of 10 kg/h. Contin­
uous reaction system is one of the promising research orientations for
the commercialization of microwave-assisted pyrolysis technologies [2].
4. Progress in microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics
Municipal solid waste mainly includes five types of polyolefin plas­
tics, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In recent years,
microwave heating technology has been widely used in the pyrolysis of
these waste plastics to produce a liquid product without any pretreat­
ment, which can be used as a chemical or fuel source [42,43].
4.1. Microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics
Microwave-assisted pyrolysis can convert wasted plastics into value-
added products [44]. The liquid products produced from microwave-
assisted pyrolysis of plastics can be further converted to low sulfur
naphtha and diesel fuel by distillation [45]. As shown in Fig. 7, different
plastics have various yields of oil under microwave irradiation.
PS shows the highest average oil yield as 68.92 wt%. The oil com­
ponents were mainly monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons, followed by cycloolefins and olefins, which
were similar to the components of aviation oil [53], which is consistent
with the conclusions from Undri’s work [47]. While LDPE has the lowest
average oil yield as 15.74 wt%. In addition, Table 1 shows studies for the
pyrolysis of wasted plastics under microwave field. The products of
X. Hu et al.
Fig. 2. The electromagnetic spectrum [28].
Fig. 3. The temperature gradients of microwave and conventional heating [37].
Fig. 4. Schematic of microwave-assisted pyrolysis experimental setup by Sur­
iapparao [41].
microwave-assisted pyrolysis HDPE and LDPE were naphtha, gasoline
and residue, and the quality of liquid oil was similar with diesel [48]. It
was easy to obtain fuel intermediates and petrochemicals from the
microwave-assisted pyrolysis of PP [49]. PVC could be dechlorinated by
microwave heating. At the same temperature, the selectivity for
dechlorination by microwave-assisted pyrolysis was higher than that by
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Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228
conventional pyrolysis [50]. This was because the repeated presence of
Cl atoms in the PVC skeleton provided polar nature.
Although the prospect of simple plastic under microwave-assisted
pyrolysis has been confirmed, the waste plastics in real life are often
mixtures. For this type of waste, Aishwarya and Sindhu induced the
microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastic mixture. Compared with the
homogenous plastics, the oil produced from the microwave-assisted
pyrolysis of plastic mixtures is slightly viscous, but the mixture of con­
sistency is uniform and is completely liquid at room temperature. It can
also be viewed as transportation fuel. Due to the amorphous nature of
the char, it can become an ingredient of tar [51]. The halogenated
plastic formed by a part of waste from Electric and Electronic Equipment
from end-life computers was also converted into high-quality liquid oil
in different reaction conditions. The calorific value was above 30 MJ/kg,
suitable as fuel [52].
4.2. Microwave catalytic pyrolysis of plastics
Although the microwave-assisted pyrolysis technology shows ad­
vantages for most feedstocks [54], the pyrolysis process requires a large
amount of energy owing to the poor thermal conductivity of plastics.
What’s more, the products from plastics by microwave-assisted pyrolysis
are mixtures with different carbon chain lengths (such as wax, diesel/
gasoline hydrocarbons), limiting their application in the industrial scale
[38,39]. In order to overcome the defects and get more valuable prod­
ucts with less energy consumption, adding catalysts to the microwave-
X. Hu et al. Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228

Fig. 5. The schematic diagram of the microwave-assisted pyrolysis system integrated with zeolite catalysis process by Zhang [38].

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the CMAP system [2].

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X. Hu et al.
Fig. 7. The average of oil yield in microwave pyrolysis of different plastic [46].
Table 1
Effect of microwave on different types of plastic.
Type of plastic Mode of Effect of microwave pyrolysis on
heating different plastics
PS Microwave Gave a liquid (yield 86.5 wt%)
containing higher amount of single
ring aromatic compounds;
gas and solid may be used as fuel
HDPE, LDPE Microwave Composition of fuels from HDPE and
LDPE pyrolysis are naphtha, gasoline,
and residues
PP Microwave PP (around 96 wt%) was converted
into useful liquid and gaseous
hydrocarbons
PVC Microwave Selectivity of dechlorination with
microwave irradiation was higher
than that with conventional heating,
as was the case with the
dechlorination ratio
Mixture of waste Microwave The condensate produced could be
plastics used as a transport fuel relatively
easily;
char could be used as a component in
tar
Halogenated Microwave A large amount of various different
plastics liquid fractions (76.6 wt%) were
formed together with a remarkable
reduction of the solid residue (14.2 wt
%)
assisted pyrolysis process is necessary [55]. Fig. 8 presents the optimum
oil yield from LDPE with catalysts by microwave while different cata­
lysts exhibit a marked variability in performance under exposure to
microwave. Catalysts like zeolite, sodium methoxide, metal, etc. can
reduce the reaction temperature and activation energy, and improve the
selectivity of the products.
Table 2 lists studies on microwave catalytic pyrolysis of plastics.
HSZM-5 can improve the cracking degree of waste plastics during the
microwave-pyrolysis process, promoting the aromatization of the
products, and further convert wax into liquid oil [61,62]. ZSM-5 can
convert long-chain olefins into small hydrocarbons and improve the
selectivity in isomerization and aromatization reactions. Increasing the
amount of ZSM-5 can improve the yield of monocyclic aromatic hy­
drocarbons in LDPE pyrolysis oil by 10% and enhance the hydrogen
production [38]. Metal oxides are also commonly used catalysts. Fan
Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228
found that MgO could convert volatile components into gas effectively,
promote the formation of alkanes, and catalyze diesel fractions into
gasoline fractions during the microwave pyrolysis of LDPE [57]. Ding
Refs learned that NiO had hydrogen absorption capacity which could
decompose LDPE into a large number of olefins [39]. Carbon based
[47] materials such as SiC and activated carbon can also improve the reaction
efficiency. In the microwave pyrolysis of HDPE, the distribution of liquid
products was concentrated on gasoline and diesel fractions as activated
[48] carbon performed a good catalytic role [60]. Although catalyst is
conducive to the microwave pyrolysis of waste plastics, the catalyst will
be poisoned or inactivated in the reaction. The waste catalyst will
[49]
become solid residue mixed with the produced char [63]. Thus, it is
desirable to find a substitute of catalyst for the pyrolysis of waste
[50] plastics.
4.3. Microwave-assisted co-pyrolysis of plastics and biomass
[51] As biomass is renewable and carbon neutral, it is a promising sub­
stitute for fossil fuels to alleviate the energy crisis and control the
emission of harmful pollutants [64]. Pyrolysis can convert biomass into
valuable biochar, bio-oil and syngas [65,66]. However, the bio-oil
[52] derived from biomass usually has low calorific value, high viscosity,
high acidity, and high oxygen content, limiting its application [67,68].
As shown in Table 3, polyolefin plastic is a kind of hydrogen-rich com­
pound, which can be a hydrogen donor in the co-pyrolysis process with
biomass, balancing the distribution of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in
the feedstocks, improving synergistically the quality of bio-oil,
providing a win–win strategy in utilization of plastics and biomass
with low cost and high efficiency [69–71].
4.4. Microwave-metal interaction
So far, all the work about the microwave-assisted pyrolysis tech­
nology to treat waste plastics are focusing on catalysts, microwave ab­
sorbents or co-pyrolysis with synergistic substances to improve the
reaction efficiency. In addition to these conventional microwave heating
methods, there is a special microwave action method - Microwave metal
pyrolysis. Specifically, the metal is placed in the reactors in shape of
cylindrical, coil, etc. When microwaves are absorbed by metals and
accumulating to a certain, they will ionize and break through the sur­
rounding medium, forming hot spots locally where the temperature
reach the melting point of metals in a short time [80]. As shown in
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Table 2
Effect of catalyst on microwave-assisted pyrolysis process.
Type of Type of catalyst Catalyst effect
plastic
LDPE Natural zeolite Zeolite catalyst pushed faster the
degradation process of plastic
and raised liquid products yield
PET Sodium methoxide The time needed to achieve complete
degradation of PET was only 5 min and
showed no degradation without
catalyst
HDPE FeAlOx FeAlOx took only 20 s to exact almost
97% of the hydrogen from waste
plastics.
HDPE Activated carbon Activated carbon could make the liquid
and molecular products concentrate on gasoline and
sieves diesel fractions; Molecular sieves
promoted the cracking of
hydrocarbons
PP and HZSM-5 HZSM-5 improved the integrity of co-
chili pyrolysis and promoted the
straw aromatization of the pyrolysis products
LDPE ZSM-5 ZSM-5 had a positive effect in
converting LDPE into valuable
aromatics and enhancing the
production of hydrogen.
LDPE MgO MgO catalyst improved the cracking of
the macromolecular volatiles and
promoted the hydrogenation of
alkenes for alkanes formation as well
as catalytic conversion of diesel
fraction to gasoline fraction.
LDPE HZSM-5 HZSM-5 catalyst narrowed the carbon
number distribution and facilitated
aromatic formation; Resulted in
different shape selectivity.
LDPE NiO and HY zeolite NiO catalyst increased the yield of ON
compound and extracted hydrogen
from alkanes to produce alkenes; HY
could convert alkenes into aromatics
and cyclo-alkenes
Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228
Fig. 8. Effect of different catalysts on product yield
from LDPE by microwave. Data adapted from
Zhang et al. [38] LDPE and ZSM-5 (pyrolysis tem­
perature: 450 ◦ C, holding time: 10 min), Ding et al.
[39] LDPE and HY (pyrolysis temperature: 500 ◦ C,
holding time: 20 min), Istoto et al. [48] LDPE
(pyrolysis temperature: 500 ◦ C, holding time: 60
min), Hassan et al. [56] LDPE and Zeolite (pyrolysis
temperature: 550 ◦ C, holding time: 90 min) and
Fan et al. [57] LDPE and MgO (pyrolysis tempera­
ture: 500 ◦ C, holding time: 20 min).
Table 4, this technology can be used as an effective alternative way to
convert waste plastics into fuel quickly, which has a great application
prospect.
Refs
5. Factors influencing microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics
[56]
The yield and quality of the final products from microwave-assisted
[58]
pyrolysis of plastics are strongly related to the parameters. As shown in
Table 5, microwave power, pyrolysis/catalytic temperature, reaction
time, catalyst type, absorbent, and raw material ratio are the significant
factors.
[59]
When the microwave power was increased from 300 to 1400 W, the
time for microwave to heat the mixed waste from room temperature to
[60] 300 ◦ C was shortened by two thirds [85]. Dai’s research on microwave-
assisted co-pyrolysis of PVC and microalgae found that when the power
was increased from 800 to 1000 W, the heating rate was increased from
257 to 402 ◦ C/min [78]. The increase of power is conducive to the
[61] formation of bio-oil, but the response of oil yield to microwave power is
not monotonic as shown in Fig. 9. As the microwave power vary from
450 to 800 W, the yield of oil from microwave-assisted pyrolysis of PS
[38]
with SiC was first increased and then decreased at around 650 W, while
the yield of gas and wax was opposite to that of oil products [53]. This
was because the increased microwave power generated more energy,
[57] which further decomposed solid products into liquids and gases. Sur­
iapparao also confirmed this inference in the microwave-assisted co-
pyrolysis of PP and graphite [41]. In addition, the composition in liquid
product was different under different microwave power. At 300 W,
aliphatic hydrocarbons dominated the liquid fraction from PP pyrolysis.
[62] With the power increasing to 600 W, the selectivity of monocyclic aro­
matic hydrocarbons increased and the content of cycloalkanes decreased
[49]. Therefore, it is extremely important to choose appropriate mi­
[39] crowave power.
Temperature and retention time are also crucial factors in the
microwave-assisted pyrolysis process. In the microwave pyrolysis pro­
cess of waste PET bottles, the conversion rate of PET increased from
28.46% to 100% with the temperature rose from 40 to 70 ◦ C [58]. As
shown in Fig. 10, the liquid product yields have the peak temperature for
most of the studies. In the study on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of PS,
the oil yield reached its maximum at around 460 ◦ C. This was because
when the pyrolysis temperature was higher than 460 ◦ C, the secondary
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Table 3
Microwave-assisted co-pyrolysis of various kinds of waste plastics and solid biomass.
Type of Type of Plastic to biomass Oil yield(wt.%) Gas yield(wt.%) HHV(Oil, MJ/kg) Refs
plastics biomasses

Biomass Mixture Composition Biomass Mixture Biomass Mixture

Alone Alone Alone

PET Rice husk 1:3,1:5,1:1,3:1,5:1 26 12–29 Monoaromatic oxygenates 42.1 39–69 13.1 34–36 [72]
and biphenyl hydrocarbons
are the major compounds

PP, PS Groundnut shell, 1:1 29–40 51–60 PS-biomass: improved the 36–50 23–31 PS 11–18 38–42 [73]
bagasse, rice PS production of aromatic 46–57 PP
husk, prosopis 25–41 hydrocarbons;
juliflflora and PP PP-biomass: promoted
mixed wood aliphatic hydrocarbons and
sawdust enhanced the selectivity
towards alkanes
PP, PS Wheat straw 1:1 54.4 26–37 High selectivity of aromatics 35.4 51–68 17.5 40–42 [74]

LDPE Microwave- 7:3,3:7,5:5 20 17 Increased the hydrocarbons 36.13 38.9 _ _ [75]

torrefied lignin (80%) and aromatic
hydrocarbons;
Reduced the phenols
LDPE Paper, pulp, 1:19 _ 27.1 Furfural and 2-Fruancarbox­ _ 41.3 _ _ [76]
cellulose aldehyde, 5-methyl-;
Generated aromatic
compounds and small
organic molecules
PP Chili straw 7:3,5:5,3:7 _ _ Increased the hydrocarbons _ _ _ _ [62]
and reduced the oxygenates
_ _ _
PVC Sophora wood 1:1,1:3,1:5 43 46–48 Reduced the content of HCl [77]
chlorine-containing (Decrease
compounds; from 30%
Increased the light to 15%)
hydrocarbons and char
Decreased the content of
PVC Microalgae 1:9,3:7,5:5,7:3,9:1 44.42 23–38 nitrogenous and oxygenous 25.92 19.8–57.6 32.71 33–39.73 [78]
organic matter;
Increased the content of
aromatic hydrocarbons

HDPE Chlorella vulgaris 1:0,4:1,2:1,1:1,3:2, _ _ Increased the hydrocarbons _ _ 21.55 _ [79]

1:4 and alcohols;
Decreased the nitrogen-
containing compounds and
the oxygen-containing
compounds

decomposition of volatile compounds resulted in lower oil yield [53].
This phenomenon was consistent well with the experimental results of
Duan [87]. In addition, the composition of oil will also change signifi­
cantly according to the temperature. Higher temperature can suppress
the aromatization reaction, leading to the reduction of aromatic content
in the product [60]. Finding a suitable reaction temperature is essential
for regulating the reaction process of microwave-assisted pyrolysis of
plastics. Generally, longer resident time means higher oil yield [56].
Jing studied on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of HDPE, the highest oil
yield of 82.36 wt% could be obtained by appropriately prolonging the
retention time [60]. In contrast, the oil yield would reduce with the
decrease of time at low power. This was because the secondary cracking
was difficult to undergo for oil [88].
Due to poor microwave absorption ability of plastics [36,90], it is
necessary to introduce microwave absorbent to receive and convert
microwave energy, improving the energy efficiency. The heating rate for
different microwave absorbent varies with intrinsic structures and
delocalized electrons in the valence band. Suriapparao [41] found that,
in microwave-assisted pyrolysis of PP, the heating rate was the highest
with the addition of fly ash as absorbent. While, SiC was the lowest.
Bartoli [91] performed that char powder obtained from the microwave-
assisted pyrolysis of tires is a potential microwave absorbent. Compared
with microwave-assisted co-pyrolysis of PS and SiC, the reaction time
was reduced by two thirds through co-pyrolysis of PS and char
respecting to the same oil yield. The loading of absorbent will affect the
fraction of pyrolysis products. Increasing the loading of SiC can raise the
oil yield. Meanwhile, with too high SiC loaded, the secondary decom­
position of volatile compounds into small molecular hydrocarbons will
result in lower oil yield [53]. In a word, absorbent plays an important
role in microwave-assisted pyrolysis. As well as, the media loss factor,
specific surface area, water content, ash content of the absorbent itself
are closely related to the quality and the distribution of pyrolysis
products [86,92].
In the microwave-assisted pyrolysis, feeding ratio of waste plastics to
absorbent can affect not only the fraction of char, oil and gas, but also
the composition of products. In the experiment of ex-situ catalytic py­
rolysis of LDPE with MgO, it was observed that when the ratio of catalyst
to plastic increase from 0 to 1/10, the oil yield decreased from 46.3 wt%
to 30.3 wt% and the gas yield increased from 52.8 wt% to 67.0 wt%.
However, when the ratio exceeded 1/10, there was little change in the
yield of oil and gas [57]. Ding also found similar phenomenon [39]. For
microwave absorbents synthesized from different raw materials such as
rice husk, corn husk and coconut sheath, the highest oil yield of PP and
PS pyrolysis appeared at the same mixing ratio of feedstock to absorbent

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Table 4
Effect of microwave-metal interaction on microwave-heating plastics.
Operating parameters Optimum Yield
Type of Type of Shape of metal
plastic metal Refs

Power (W) T (◦ C) t Oil (wt. Gas (wt. Solid (wt.

(min) %) %) %)

PS Iron Cylindrical mesh of ironl 700 1100–1200 10 80 15 5

[81]

PS and coal Copper Copper coil _ The melting point range 16 66 6 18

of copper [82]

PS Aluminum Aluminum coil,strips and _ The melting point of 8–40 88 10 2 [44]

cylinder aluminum

PS Copper Copper coil _ 1000–1100 5–15 85 12 3

[83]

PS, PP, Iron Iron coil 500–2500 154–937 30 _ _ _

LDPE [84]

PS, PP, Iron Iron coil 500–2500(with an 250–800 19 88.7 6.7 4.6
LDPE increment of 200 W) [46]

[86]. In addition, properly increasing the feeding ratio of biomass can hydrogen which can be used as chemical material or green energy.
improve the quality of bio-oil from the co-pyrolysis of waste plastics and
biomass [78]. 7. Conclusion and prospect

6. Application of microwave technology Compared with traditional pyrolysis, microwave-assisted pyrolysis is

The first commercial microwave oven was invented by P. Spencer of
Raytheon company in 1952 [93]. Currently, microwave technology has
already played an important role in various fields. Firstly, it is widely
used in the food and herb industry for sterilization, drying and thawing
process. As shown in Fig. 11(a), it is a sterilization system consisted of
microwave cavities, which is suitable for various packaged food prod­
ucts weighed in 0.30 kg to 2.50 kg. Compared with traditional heating
treatment methods as steam or hot water, it can reduce processing time
and penetrate into deep inside of the foods [94]. The household mi­
crowave oven is also intensively used in daily life for heating food [95].
In the mining and metallurgical industries, the thermal stress induced by
microwave can soften the hard rocks which is depicted in Fig. 11(b). The
metal elements therein can be dissolved or extracted easier [96,97]. Due
to less noise and dust, it has better environmental benefits than tradi­
tional rock breakage methods such as drilling, blasting, jack hammers,
etc [98]. Microwave heating is also applied in the ceramic industry,
where microwave can significantly reduce the calcination temperature,
thereby generating new composite materials [99,100]. What’s more,
microwave has shown positive effect on the germination of cones [101]
and wood drying [102]. Fig. 11(c) displays a cylindrical microwave
vacuum drying chamber (60 cm in diameter and 150 cm in height) with
2450 MHz frequency magnetrons. Lv et al. found this drying chamber
can prevent bamboo from cracking and shrinkage so as to improve the
quality of bamboo and energy efficiency with response to the traditional
drying methods [103]. In addition, microwave technology also plays an
important role in the field of chemical organic synthesis.
Recently, microwave technology used to pyrolyze waste plastics into
oil, gas and char has attracted increasing attention. Usually, the pro­
duced liquid oil has similar characteristics to conventional diesel as a
fuel. Fan et al. got the highest oil yield in the world was 98.78 wt% under
the optimum condition by microwave pyrolysis waste PS. It is found the
main components of pyrolysis oil were C8-C16 (64.79–85.93 area%) in
which styrene (C8H8) occupy 44.34–73.59 area%, indicating that the oil
has the potential to be converted into aviation oil [53]. Char produced
from microwave pyrolysis can be applied in treatment of water, flue gas,
and etc. [14]. The produced gases from microwave heating are almost
a promising technology to convert waste plastics into value-added
products. The reaction process can be controlled by changing micro­
wave power, pyrolysis temperature, reaction time, catalyst, microwave
absorbent, raw material blending ratio, and etc. The produced oil can
directly replace petroleum oil. Despite of many advantages, there are
still bottlenecks limit the progress of microwave-assisted pyrolysis of
plastics.
Nowadays, most of the research on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of
waste plastics needs to be carried out with absorbent due to the poor
dielectric property of the plastic. However, the specific role of the
absorbent in the energy conversion and catalyzing the reaction in the
microwave-assisted pyrolysis process is still unclear. Considering the
heating efficiency mainly relies on the dielectric properties of the ma­
terial, it is indispensable to detect the change of dielectric properties,
magnetic properties and thermal properties of absorbents and feedstocks
under microwave. Additionally, care should be taken when measuring
dielectric properties because the result accuracy is easily affected by the
interval or uniformity of raw material [104–106].
Another critical limitation is that it is hard to accurately measure the
reaction temperature with conventional measuring equipment such as
thermocouple and infrared thermometer. The thermocouple will start to
melt as the reaction temperature is above 1000 ◦ C. Besides, the tem­
perature inside the core of feedstock is usually higher than the surface in
microwave-assisted pyrolysis, thus the temperature measured by
infrared has a hysteresis phenomenon [107]. Moreover, the hotspot ef­
fect induced by microwave will pose an extra challenge to the accurate
measurement of temperature [8]. In the future, the measurement tech­
nology can be improved by combining thermocouple, thermal imaging
scanner and software, such as QW-BHM or Quick Wave 3D, so as to
ensure the monitoring of internal real-time temperature, modeling the
temperature field in the microwave reactor accurately [108,109].
Until now, microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics is proven effec­
tive only in the laboratory scale. In the future, it is essential to scale up
microwave treatment reactors from laboratory to pilot. In addition, the
economic viability of microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics is also
need to be focused. Zhou et al. found that the energy derived from the
gas product alone can satisfy the energy demand during the pyrolysis of

222
 X. Hu et al.
Table 5
Effect of various factors on microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastic.
Type of plastic Mass of Mass of Operating parameters Optimum Yield Others HHV Refs
plastic absorbent (MJ/kg)
(g) (g)

Power Temperature Time Catalyst Microwave Plastic to Plastic Oil (wt. Gas Solid
(W) (◦ C) (min) type absorbent absorbent to %) (wt.%) (wt.
ratio catalyst %)
ratio

Organochloride 50 g – 400, 800, 220–300 15–20 – Graphite, silicon 2:1 – – – – 87% 20.56 [85]
plastics 1200, carbide dechlorination
1400 rate
PVC and 50 g 10 %AC 800, 1000 550 40 – Activated — — 41.5 24.9 33.6 – 20–30 [78]
microalage carbon
(1:9, 3:7, 5:5,
7:3, 9:1)
PS 30 g 30, 45, 60, 450, 550, 340, 400, 460, 60 – Silicon carbide 98.78 0.56 0.66 – – [53]
75, 90 650, 750, 520, 580
850
PP 5–50 g – 180, 300, 600 – – Activated 5:1–100:1 – 89.34 10.57 0.09 – 36.37–44.45 [41]
450, 600, carbon, silicon
800 carbide,
graphite,
aluminium
powder, lignin
223

and fly ash

PP 50 g 50, 200, 300, 450, 600 – – Graphite – – 83.3 – – – 42–44 [49]
350 600
PET 0.3 g 0.2 g 300 30–70 1–7 Sodium – – – – – – 73.93% – [58]
methoxide Terephthalic
acid
PP and lignin 10 g 850 g – 200, 250, 300, – HZSM-5 Silicon carbide – 1:0, 1:1, 59.42 19.36 21.22 – – [87]
(1:0, 1:1, 1:2, 350 bed 2:1,4:1
2:1, 0:1)
LDPE 30 g 30 g – 300, 400, 500, 45, Zeolite Activated 1:1 1:1 28.12 69.00 2.88 Containing – [56]
550 60, catalyst carbon polymeric
75, 90 compounds
HDPE – – 20%-40% 520 0–90 Activated – 100:100, 2:1,4:1 87.75 5.25 7 – – [60]
of 900 W carbon and 100:330
molecular
sieves

Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228

Halogenated 200 g 100 3000 386–450 30–60 – Iron and carbon 2:1 – 76.6 2.2 21.2 – 37 [52]
plastics
LDPE 20 g – 700 480 10 ZSM–5 – – 1.32:1, 32.58 65.13 1.89 – – [38]
4.68:1
LDPE 15 g 500 3000 350, 400, 450, 20 MgO Silicon carbide 3:100 15:1, 24.2–38.5 >56.6 <7.1 – – [57]
500, 550 10:1,
5:1, 3:1
PS, PP, PS + PP 10 g 1–4 180, 360, – 10,20 – Carbon and 10:0.5, – 84.30 15.7 – – 46.87 [86]
540,720, activated carbon 10:1, 10:2
900
X. Hu et al. Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228

Fig. 9. Effect of microwave power on oil yield by microwave pyrolysis plastics. Data derived from these typical references: Suriapparao et al. [41] PP and graphite
(holding time: 40 min), Arshad et al. [46] PS/PP/LDPE and iron coil (holding time: 19–26 min), Fan et al. [53] PS and SiC (holding time: 60 min), Dai et al. [78] PVC
(holding time: 40 min), Rex et al. [86] PP,PS and rice husk activated carbon (holding time: 10–20 min).

Fig. 10. Effect of temperature on oil yield in the

microwave pyrolysis process. Data adapted from
Zhou et al. [2] HDPE (total microwave power: 9 kW,
holding time: 60 min), Zhang et al. [38] LDPE and
ZSM-5 (total microwave power: 1 kW, holding time:
10 min), Ding et al. [39] LDPE and HY (total micro­
wave power: 1.8 kW, holding time: 20 min), Fan et al.
[53] PS and SiC (total microwave power: 1 kW,
holding time: 60 min), Fan et al. [57] LDPE and MgO
(total microwave power: 3 kW, holding time: 20 min),
Zhao et al. [64] PP/bamboo and HZSM-S (total mi­
crowave power: 1 kW), Yu et al. [77] PVC and
sophora wood (total microwave power: 1 kW, holding
time: 30 min), Duan et al. [87] PP/liglin and HZSM-5
(total microwave power: 1 kW), Zeng et al. [89]
LDPE/waste cooking oil and HZSM-5 (total micro­
wave power: 1.4 kW, holding time: 30–70 min).

HDPE [2]. Before putting into practical application, it is necessary to microwave-assisted pyrolysis of plastics is also noteworthy.
conduct further studies on the techno-economic assessment of the
technology, considering the energy consumption, the cost of equipment,
labor and maintenance. In addition, the carbon footprint in the

224
X. Hu et al. Carbon Resources Conversion 6 (2023) 215–228

(a)

(b)

(c)

Drying

Fig. 11. Application examples of microwave technology: a microwave sterilization system (a) [94]; a microwave-induced cutting apparatus (b) [98]; a cylindrical
microwave vacuum drying chamber (c) [103].

225
X. Hu et al.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xuan Hu: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Dachao Ma: Conceptualization, Formal
analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Guangyi Zhang: Conceptualization, Meth­
odology, Project administration. Mengxue Ling: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Project administration. Qiaoling Hu: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Project administration. Kangyi Liang: Conceptualiza­
tion, Methodology, Project administration. Jiacheng Lu: Conceptuali­
zation, Methodology, Project administration. Yifan Zheng:
Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of
China (52166011).
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