THERMAL AND MICROWAVE PYROLYSIS OF TIRES TO PRODUCE FUEL

In Mexico more than 25,000,000 tires are disposed every year, this produce more than 250,000,000 kg of waste material, equivalent to 3 million barrels of fuel oil. Thus a simple an efficient way for transforming the waste tires into fuel is a priority project. A team of four undergraduate students were given a project, in order to bring a real solution. They were supervised constantly during six month in order to achieve their goals. The project consisted in the pyrolysis of tires to obtain fuel, and useful sub-products. Two procedures were used, thermal degradation and microwave degradation. In this paper we will discuss the difference between the two methods and the advantage of each one. The first method was the use of thermal energy for the pyrolysis, the task was to obtained depolymerization products without complete decomposition, and this was achieved with a high temperature and a short time, using inert atmosphere. The second depolymerization method was with microwave radiation; it was found that, in order to activate the pyrolysis of the tires, carbon has to be incorporate into the mixture; a continuous microwave oven was developed in order to obtain the final product. Comparison between the two procedures is presented.