Energy & Fuels, Vol.27, No.2, 1040-1049, 2013
Predictive Kinetics Model for an Industrial Waste Tire Pyrolysis Process
A new pyrolysis model was developed to predict the individual product (noncondensable volatiles, condensable volatiles, and char) yield for Ecolomondo's industrial waste tire pyrolysis process. This novel predictive kinetics-based model couples product selectivity data obtained from thermogravimetric analysis experiments to a global single-step decomposition reaction term to reproduce the nonlinear relationship between product selectivity and temperature. A transient energy balance based on a lumped capacitance method was also used to calculate the tire shred temperature using the rotary drum wall temperature as an input. The kinetics model was compared to experimental oil production data from the industrial process as well as existing models in the literature. It is shown that the model can successfully predict the oil production of the industrial process and the model accuracy is greater for smooth operating conditions. On the other hand, other pyrolysis models from the literature failed to accurately predict the oil production.