Waste tyre, one kind of non-biodegradable solid wastes, can be a feedstock for pyrolysis process to produce valuable products, including non-condensable gas, pyrolysis oil and char. This study investigated the mass loss kinetic, heat flows, product yield and product quality of waste tyre pyrolysis. The results of the investigation of mass loss kinetic and heat flows of waste tyre pyrolysis were applied to aid the design of waste tyre pyrolysis process....[ Read more ]

Waste tyre, one kind of non-biodegradable solid wastes, can be a feedstock for pyrolysis process to produce valuable products, including non-condensable gas, pyrolysis oil and char. This study investigated the mass loss kinetic, heat flows, product yield and product quality of waste tyre pyrolysis. The results of the investigation of mass loss kinetic and heat flows of waste tyre pyrolysis were applied to aid the design of waste tyre pyrolysis process.

Two types of waste tyres were provided for this study by a commercial company. The first part of this study investigated the mass loss kinetic and heat flows of waste tyre pyrolysis at uniform heating rates. Results of thermogravimetric analysis at heating rates 2, 5, 10 and 20℃/min were modeled for the understanding of mass loss kinetic. The model results of mass loss kinetic were used for modeling the results of differential thermal analysis for the understanding of heat flows of pyrolysis.

The second part of this study involved the bench-scale and pilot-scale pyrolysis studies. Product yields, pyrolysis oil quality and char quality of waste tyre pyrolysis were investigated. The application of the mass loss kinetics obtained in the first part of this study to the pilot-scale study showed the tyres of the pilot-scale study were pyrolyzed at non-uniform heating rates. Thus, the last part of this study developed a finite difference model for modeling the pyrolysis of tyre shreds at non-uniform heating rate based on the findings of the first part of this study. By the finite difference model, a multi-stage pyrolysis process was proposed.