Avaliação comparativa de rotas termoquímicas da reciclagem de plásticos no cenário brasileiro

Abstract

Currently, the growing accumulation of plastic waste represents one of the main environmental and economic challenges facing society. In this context, thermochemical recycling routes have gained prominence as alternatives to traditional methods (such as mechanical recycling) due to their ability to convert plastic waste into higher‐value products, such as oils and synthesis gases that can be turned into fuels. Accordingly, this work aims to carry out a comparative analysis of the main thermochemical recycling routes for plastics—pyrolysis, gasification, and hydrothermal liquefaction based on a critical, integrative literature review of these processes followed by the construction of decision matrices evaluating their techno‐economic and socio‐environmental factors. The results obtained allow us to conclude that chemical pyrolysis establishes itself as the thermochemical route with the greatest techno‐economic and socio‐environmental viability in Brazil, exhibiting lower implementation and operating costs as well as proven technological maturity, which favors its adoption on a large scale. It was also found that gasification, although flexible in processing mixed and contaminated waste, faces significant constraints due to impurity treatment and high energy consumption, requiring improvements in pretreatment and process optimization. Hydrothermal liquefaction, in turn, showed potential to produce high‐value liquid fractions but was hindered by high water consumption, operational complexity, and substantial costs. Thus, it is concluded that, beyond consolidating pyrolysis, it is imperative to promote additional experimental research in gasification and hydrothermal liquefaction to validate their performance at real scale and broaden the range of integrated solutions for plastic waste treatment in the country.