The Autothermal Pyrolysis of Waste Tires

Abstract

The growing amount of rubber waste, such as that from tires and cables, has resulted in serious environmental problems. Since rubber waste is not easily biodegradable even after a long period of landfill treatment, material and energy recovery is the preferable alternative to disposal. The potential offered by waste tire pyrolysis for solving both energy and waste treatment problems is widely recognized. Pyrolysis is one method of inducing thermal decomposition without using any oxidizing agent, or using such a limited supply of the agent that oxidization does not proceed to an appreciable extent. The latter may be described as autothermal pyrolysis and will be studied in the present work.

The main objective of this research was to study the operating parameters of autothermal pyrolysis of scrap tires in a laboratory-scale fluidized bed reactor with a 100-cm bed height (10 cm I.D.) and a 100-cm freeboard (25 cm I.D.). Scrap tires were pyrolyzed in a limited oxygen supply, so that the heat for pyrolysis of the scrap tires was provided by combustion of some portion of the scrap tires. The operating parameters evaluated included the effect on the pyrolysis oil products and their relative proportions of (1) the air factor (O.O7–O35); (2) the pyrolysis temperature (370–570 °C); and (3) the catalyst added (zeolite and calcium carbonate). The results show that: (1) the composition of the liquid hydrocarbon obtained is affected significantly by the air factor; (2) the higher operating temperature caused a higher yield of gasoline and diesel; (3) the yield of gasoline increased due to the catalyst zeolite added, and the yield of diesel increased due to the addition of the catalyst calcium carbonate; (4) the principal constituents of gasoline included dipentene and diprene.