1. Effective and green tire recycling through microwave pyrolysis
- Author
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Zhang, Yu-zhe, Bian, Ting-ting, Zhang, Yi, Zheng, Xu-dong, and Li, Zhong-yu
- Abstract
Waste tire rubber has become a severe environmental issue, which calls for a green method to recycle this rubber. Microwave thermolysis serves as an ideal recycling process for used tires. By surveying the dielectric characteristics from 25 to 700 °C under microwave frequencies of 915 and 2466 MHz, the microwave absorption ability of waste tire rubbers was studied. At temperatures below 350 °C, the dielectric characteristics were relatively steady. Both the loss factor and relative dielectric constant (DC) increased sharply with the rise in temperature. The reason for this is the release of volatile substances, which increases the electrical conductivity. The performance of microwave absorption of tire rubber during thermolysis, and thus the efficiency of microwave tire rubber thermolysis, can be largely impacted by the specimen dimension. The calculation of the reflection loss (RL) of the tire rubber specimens suggests that when the waste tire rubber is 5 mm thick, the highest microwave absorption can be achieved at 915 MHz and 592.1 °C, with RL of −17.30 dB. The product after microwave pyrolysis of waste tire rubber comprises 35% carbon black, 40% oil, and 25% gas. Based on this investigation of the optimal condition of microwave absorption, a proper microwave pyrolysis recycling system was designed for waste tire. This system is efficient at recycling the waste tire rubber into valuable carbon black, oil, and gas products.
- Published
- 2018
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