Kinetics of Granulated Waste Tyre Pyrolysis via Thermogravimetry and Model-Free Methods

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 96 - 102, 27.06.2019

Peter T. Cherop , Sammy L. Kiambi Paul Musonge

Abstract

There has been an increase in global consumption of waste tyres over the
years. However only a portion of the total amount of waste tyres can be recycled
or reused for other applications. Land-filling has been considered an
alternative to address the problem of continued waste tyres accumulation, but
huge space is needed for this and the reusable resources are wasted. This
therefore has led to environmental and economic problem of disposal of the
large mass of waste tyres. Waste tyre pyrolysis, which is the thermal
decomposition in absence of oxygen, can be used to recover both energy and
material. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) is the technique commonly used to
evaluate the weight loss kinetics associated with the vaporisation of materials
during pyrolysis. The purpose of this study was to establish the kinetics of
thermal degradation of waste tyres by TGA and to compare the activation
energies (E) obtained using two model-free methods. The experiments were
carried out in a nitrogen environment and a temperature range of 20°C to 600°C  at three heating rates. Results show that the pyrolysis process of the tyre crumb occurs in
three stages as the various components of the tyre undergo decomposition. A mean
activation energy of approximately 232 kJmol^-1 was obtained using
the two models.

Keywords

Waste tyre, activation energy, thermal degradation, model-free

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