Kinetic modeling of waste tire carbonization

The pyrolysis of waste tire particles has been studied with a view to developing the understanding of this process in relation to using the product chars as precursors for activated carbon production. In the present work, the effects of heating rates have been studied using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and modeled. Two models have been studied and applied to the pyrolysis of waste tire particles. Models based on three-, four- and five-kinetic-step tire decompositions, assuming the component tire composition to be natural rubber (NR), butadiene rubber (BR), and styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), have been developed and tested. The five-kinetic-step mechanism is developed on the basis that BR and SBR both undergo two-step decomposition reactions and that NR only undergoes a one-step decomposition. Additional evidence was obtained by developing a five-step kinetic model based on a Runge-Kutta solution methodology which gave the lowest sum-of-squared error (SSE) values comparing several multistep model data and experimental data.