FRACTIONAL DISTILLATION OF PYROLYSIS OIL

It is known that pyrolysis oil contains many valuable chemicals such as dipentene (limonene), benzene, toluene, xylenes, ethylbenzene, and others. A possible approach to making the pyrolytic processing of waste tires more attractive (from an economical point of view) is the recovery of valuable chemicals, which can be used as motor fuel. The pyrolysis process of tire particles was carried out at a temperature of 500 degrees C in water vapor stream. Pyrolysis oils of waste tires contain organic substances with a huge dispersion of molecular weight, represented by various classes of organic compounds such as hydrocarbons, amides, phenols, amines, organosulfur substances, etc. Analysis of pyrolysis products is a very difficult task because of their complexity and multicomponent properties. The problem of identifying pyrolysis mixtures is acute, as the development of reliable analysis of pyrolysis oils is extremely urgent, and it can be solved with the help of the method of preliminary sample preparation. On the other hand, an important step in the recovery of chemicals from pyrolysis oil is primary fractionation, where pyrolysis oil is separated into less complex fractions or mixtures. For reliable analysis of pyrolysis oil of waste automobile tires and chemical compounds separation, fractional distillation was carried out. Elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of pyrolysis oil were performed. It was found that pyrolysis oil boils at a wide temperature range; four fractions were isolated from pyrolysis oil. It can be concluded that fractional distillation is a promising method for concentrating compounds (classes) and, thus, for controlling the quality of pyrolysis oils. For instance, performing the volatile fractions gives an aromatic liquid containing 60 wt% light organics, which is important for the use of pyrolysis oil as a motor fuel.