Discarded plastics can be converted to various fuels and chemicals to generate positive economic value instead of polluting the environment. In the past few years, pyrolysis has attracted much attention in the industrial and scientific communities as a promising versatile platform to convert plastic waste into valuable resources. However, it is still difficult to fine-tune an efficient and selective pyrolysis process to narrow the product distribution for a feasible commercial production. Furthermore, traditional plastic-to-fuels technology looks like another expensive way to burn fossil fuels, making no contribution to the plastic circular economy. By learning from the developed plastic-to-fuels technology, achieving the conversion of plastic waste into naphtha or plastic monomers that can be used for new plastic manufacturing in a closed-loop way is a more promising resource recovery pathway. However, there is no comprehensive review so far about achieving plastic waste recycling/upcycling by pyrolysis. This article will provide a critical review about the recovery pathways of plastic pyrolysis based on the various products (fuels, naphtha, hydrogen, and light olefins). It will overview the recent advances regarding plastic pyrolysis process and reactor design, introduce various recovery pathways based on the pyrolysis process, summarize process optimization and catalyst development, discuss the present challenges for plastic pyrolysis, highlight the importance and significance of creating a plastics’ circular economy, discuss the economic feasibility, the environmental impact, and outlook for future development for plastic pyrolysis. This review presents useful information to further develop and design an advanced pyrolysis process, with an improved efficiency, desirable product selectivity, and minimum environmental impacts. It is helpful to encourage more circular economy-oriented research aimed at converting waste plastics to naphtha and plastic monomers instead of simply producing fuels from the scientific communities of chemistry, energy, and the environment.

废弃的塑料可以转化为各种燃料和化学品，以产生积极的经济价值，而不是污染环境。在过去的几年里，热解作为将塑料废物转化为宝贵资源的有前途的多功能平台，在工业和科学界引起了广泛关注。然而，仍然难以微调有效和选择性的热解过程以缩小产品分布以实现可行的商业生产。此外，传统的塑料制燃料技术看起来像是另一种燃烧化石燃料的昂贵方式，对塑料循环经济没有任何贡献。通过学习发达的塑料燃料技术，实现废塑料转化为石脑油或塑料单体可用于新塑料制造的闭环，是一条更有前景的资源回收途径。然而，到目前为止，还没有关于通过热解实现塑料废物回收/升级的全面审查。本文将对基于各种产品（燃料、石脑油、氢气和轻质烯烃）的塑料热解回收途径进行批判性审查。它将概述塑料热解工艺和反应器设计的最新进展，介绍基于热解工艺的各种回收途径，总结工艺优化和催化剂开发，讨论塑料热解当前面临的挑战，强调创建塑料循环的重要性和意义经济，讨论塑料热解的经济可行性、环境影响和未来发展前景。本综述为进一步开发和设计先进的热解工艺提供了有用的信息，该工艺具有更高的效率、理想的产品选择性和最小的环境影响。鼓励更多以循环经济为导向的研究旨在将废塑料转化为石脑油和塑料单体，而不是简单地从化学、能源和环境科学界生产燃料。