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현대사회와과학/불편한진실 : ENVIRON

폐타이어 처리

Introduction

In spite of the efforts, the disposal of products at the end of their life still remains as an important environmental problem. In fact, this is a challenging problem for waste tires which represent over 2% of total solid waste. In only the European Union, it is estimated that around 250 million car and truck tires are discarded each year which is about 2.6 million tones of tire. Worldwide generation of waste tires is estimated to be 1 billion tires.1

The need to deal with this problem has been highlighted by the European Union that has attempted to control the management of tires through two European Commission Directives: The Waste Landfill Directive (1999)2 which bans the landfilling of tires by 2006 and The End of Life Vehicle Directive (2000)3 which stipulates the selective collection of tires from vehicle dismantlers and encourages the recycling of them. These two directives will have a great impact on the management of tires throughout the European Union. Up to now, the current main routes for the management of waste tires in Europe have been landfilling (40%), energy recovery (20%), material recycling (18%), rethreading (11%), and exportation (11%). Considering that The Waste Landfill Directive is now enforced, it is urgent to develop alternative technologies for recycling at least the 40% waste tires that are dumped in landfills. These technologies must ensure the tire transformation into usable products or into energy while being environmentally friendly.

Tire material has high volatile and fixed carbon contents with heating values greater than that of coal and biomass. These properties make it an ideal raw material for thermochemical processes.4 Pyrolysis can be an alternative for waste tire management. After tire pyrolysis, three phases are obtained: gas, liquid, and solid. While solid and liquid products are recovered, stored, and possibly commercialized, the gas fraction can be used in situ to provide the energy requirements of the process, contributing to design a cost-effective and thermally integrated process.



ASAP Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., ASAP Article, 10.1021/ie071573o
Web Release Date: May 14, 2008

Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society

Waste Tire Pyrolysis: Comparison between Fixed Bed Reactor and Moving Bed Reactor

E. Aylón, A. Fernández-Colino, M. V. Navarro, R. Murillo,* T. García, and A. M. Mastral

Instituto de Carboquí