Abstract
Abstract—Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) waste is considered one of the environmentally hazardous plastic materials accumulating in huge quantities in landfills. This work was conducted for the purpose of using green chemistry techniques to convert the PVC waste into other chemicals that could be used for commercial purposes. Pyrolysis process of the PVC waste was carried out under inert atmospheric condition. The effect of grain size, temperature and heating time on the amount of evolved hydrogen chloride gas (HCl) was investigated. More than 95% of theoretical calculated amount of HCl was evolved before any emission of any other organic fumes. The evolved HCl was trapped and converted into concentrated hydrochloric acid (11.22 M) and then to a highly pure sodium chloride salt. The residual black material was heated further to remove and trap oily organic fumes. About 14% of initial PVC weight was found to be as heavy metals free oil and may be used as fuel. Finally, 27.74% of the degraded PVC remained as carbon black. The carbon black was grounded and acid digested to remove and determine heavy metal ions content.