Pyrolysis as a potential approach to waste tire management
Date
2022
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Waste tire is one of the most stubborn solid wastes of modern time. Every year United States alone produces around 300 million waste tires. Due to increasing population and increased number of vehicles the number is increasing every year. A significant portion of the waste tires ends up in the landfill creating environmental hazards and taking up huge spaces. There are some options for waste tire management. The study investigates pyrolysis as a potential approach to the management of waste tire problems. Tires were cut into cross sections and pyrolyzed in a muffle furnace in 350, 400, 500, 600, 7000C. Tire char, pyrolysis gas and metals were separated and recovered as products. Chemical, thermogravimetric analysis was conducted on tire and char along with the material and energy balance of the process. Experiments show that pyrolysis is complete around 5000C, the char yield is 37±1% and after that no visible changes happen. Potential toxicity of tire pyrolysis products was also explored. Furthermore, some properties of char such as specific surface area, enthalpy of combustion, electron storage capacity was measured to explore their potential use. Experiments show a nine-thousand-fold increase in surface area of the char compared to the tire which implies that char can be used as adsorbent.
Description
Keywords
Energy, Pyrolysis, Waste tires