Improvement of Solid Product Quality in Pyrolysis of Tyre Derived Fuels (TDF)

Waste tyres do not decompose easily in the nature and cause to many environmental problems. Although, 24 million tyres / y are produced and 8.5 million (180.000 t) of these amount become waste in Turkey, these waste tyres are not evaluated properly. Indeed, waste tyres can be used as a new source of energy and raw material through some thermal processes. One of the thermal processes is pyrolysis that waste tyres can be converted into gas, oil and solid product. For instance, solid product can be used as carbon black with some quality improvements especially removal of ash and sulphur. In this study, it was focused on the improvement of solid product quality in pyrolysis of TDF. For this aim, TDF sample consists of different waste tyre types (SBR-Styrene-butadiene Rubber, CBR-Cis Polybutadiene Rubber) was pyrolysed by using a fixed bed reactor, at 400 degrees C with 5 degrees C/ min heating rate. Sulphur and ash content of TDF and solid product samples were determined and compared with commercial carbon black values. It was seen that sulphur and ash contents of samples were higher than commercial carbon black. Therefore, solid product was treated with HCl and HNO(3) for the ash removing. And also, the effect of ultrasound on the photocatalytic oxidation (Sonophotocatalytic oxidation) of sulphur particles catalyzed by titanium dioxide was studied. As a conclusion, the improvement studies had a positive effect to decrease ash and sulphur content of solid product.