Old tires could be transformed just like any other trash into oil so why is this not being developed?
Answer:
There is a way to recover oil from tires with thermo depolarization. It is around 85% efficient. That means you only waste about 15% of the energy of the feedstock in keeping the machines running. The process works with any organic and synthetic plastic molecules. You shred the tires and add water. You then heat them to about 900 degrees under a couple of times atmospheric pressure. It breaks down any complex organic chains into light oil. The mixture then enters a vacuum chamber which pulls all the water and solids out of the mixture. You are left with a light crude mixture, carbon black, various minerals and metals, natural gas, and distilled water. They have and experimental plant next to a turkey processing plant running on the turkey offal.
The cost and energy output could be prohibitive.
In my area, old tires get ground up and added to black top for roads. It's still in the experimental stage, but it looks promising.
Tires are a special case. Reclaiming their oil is too energy intensive to be practical. That's why it's used for making soft playgrounds, more flexible roadbeds, and other secondary uses.
THERE IS an inexpensive practice already available:
USE THE TIRES IN A CEMENT KILN as alternative fuel
(After having shred them to recover the wires from the structure).
Cement kiln have an even higher residency time than incinerators (5s instead of 2s). They are equipped with DeNOx and DeSOx (desulfurization).
I believe breaking the elastomeric molecules of rubber consumes a lot of energy (e.G. in thermal depolymerization).
It is being developed. I personally am working on using waste sawdust from lumber mills to make gasoline. The only problem is, these technologies take years to develop, and while developing, they get no press. But just because they don't make press does not mean that they aren't being developed.
tires come in part from oil/also from rubber...to disassemble the molecules into oil would take more energy than the oil energy derived from the tires.
Manufacturing energy takes energy which also pollutes.
Scrap tires as fuel
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The single biggest use of scrap tires in the United States and the European Union is as fuel. Environmentally or even economically speaking, it is not the best method of reclaiming scrap tires, but it beats the alternative of disposing or dumping unused tires.
What a tire's made of
The Goodyear P195/75R14 all season passenger tire, the most popular size, weighs about 21 pounds and contains:
Material Pounds
30 different types of synthetic rubber 5
Eight types of natural rubber 4
Eight types of carbon black 5
Steel cord for belts 1
Polyester and nylon 1
Steel bead wire <1
40 different kinds of chemicals, waxes, oils, pigments, etc. 3
Approximate Composition Percentages:
Carbon 85%
Ferric material 10-15%
Sulfur 0.9 to 1.25%
Source: Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission
Whole tires and rough tire chips are used at cement kilns, pulp and paper mills, power plants, waste-to-energy plants and industrial boilers. In 2000, approximately 47 percent of the 273 million scrap tires generated in the United States were burned for fuel.
Ohio lags far behind the rest of the nation and much of the industrialized world in burning tires for fuel, so-called "energy recovery." In 2000, only 11 percent of Ohio's 14 million newly scrapped tires were burned for fuel, mostly outside Ohio.
Ohio and its industries sat out on a national wave of tire-derived fuel (TDF) development that started in the mid-1980s. Uncertainty about air emission standards and questions about pending deregulation of the electric utility industry made Ohio utilities slow to integrate scrap tires in their fuel mix.
That cautionary approach has had its benefits. Ohio actually recycles a much higher percentage of its tires than the national average. In 2000, Ohio recycled 61 percent of its tires into new products, compared to the national average of 26 percent that year. Recycling is environmentallly and economically preferrable to combustion as a way of managing scrap tires.
But there were drawbacks as well, such as a severe lack of markets for the other 39 percent of Ohio's scrap tires.
Ohio is pushing ahead to make up for lost time. In 2002, the state restructured a tire recycling grant program to help utilities and industries fund the research and equipment purchases necessary to use TDF. The program gives out approximately $1 million in grants each year.
While it may seem counterintuitive to anyone who's seen an uncontrolled tire fire, there actually can be environmental benefits to controlled burning of scrap tires or TDF chips for energy. TDF produces slightly more heating value than coal with similar emissions. Terry Gray, a TDF consultant, says coal mixed with TDF produces less ash, greenhouse gases and metal emissions than burning coal alone.
Cement kilns are considered good places to use TDF because the ash is incorporated into the final product, there is no waste to dispose of, according to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.
Energy-intensive pulp and paper mills and metal foundries are also strong candidates for using TDF, in part because TDF is often cheaper than coal.
Such industrial users of TDF can often burn whole tires, a practice that cuts down the expense of shredding tires, but that increases storage and shipping costs.
Though using TDF reclaims some of the energy that went into making a scrap tire, it remains the second most wasteful alternative after disposal for managing scrap tires. That fact puts "energy recovery" near the bottom of the hierarchy of scrap tire management alternatives, just above dumping them.
For one thing, a tire is more than just a petroleum product. A 21-pound tire contains only five pounds of petroleum-based synthetic rubber. The rest is natural rubber, steel belts and bead wire, carbon black, cloth and a mix of other chemicals which do not contribute significantly to the heating value of an incinerated tire.
Burning tires for fuel also reclaims only a small portion of the energy it takes to produce a tire.
Energy lost in tire-derived fuel
Measurement: Kilowatt-hours per kilogram of synthetic rubber
Energy needed to manufacture a tire 32.0
Energy needed to produce tire rubber compound 25.0
Thermal energy released when incinerating scrap tires 9.0
Energy consumed in the process of grinding scrap tires into crumb rubber 1.2
Sources: W. Dierks: Incorporating the Use of Recycled Rubber, Robert Snyder: Scrap Tire Disposal and Reuse, compilation by Kurt Reschner.
Burning a tire for fuel also precludes further recycling.
Reschner points out that reusing, retreading or recycling tires is preferrable to burning them for economic reasons as well as environmental ones. The global traffic in used tires and retreadable tire casings show a strong market interest in reuse and retreading. Crumb rubber prepared for recycling also sells for $200 to $400 a ton, as much as 10 times the price paid for TDF chips.
But in the absence of viable recycling alternatives, Reschner writes, tire-derived fuel "is a perfectly reasonable use for scrap tires."
Next: Other ways to recycle scrap tires
• Recycling Tires: Introduction
• The nature of rubber
• Charles Goodyear
• The rubber meets the road
• Search for synthetic rubber
• Rubber goes to war
• Synthetic rubber comes of age
• Ohio's rubber industry
• A history of rubber recycling
• Problems with wasting scrap tires: Fire
• Problems with wasting scrap tires: Disease
• Why recycle scrap tires?
• Scrap tire management alternatives
• Tire care, reuse and retreads
• Uses for scrap tires: Crumb rubber
• Scrap tires as fuel
• Other ways to recycle scrap tires
Just been reading the previous answers, the one posted by Micheal is very interesting.
It seems the US is concentrating more on burning old tires rather than recycling them. Here in Europe we used to burn some tires but it wasn't cost effective, not very fuel efficient and produced quite a bit of pollution.
A lot of tires now are shredded into particulate or crumb rubber which is used in surface dressings. The more rubber is added the softer the dressing so for blacktop on roads only a small amount is added, for softer surfaces such as sidewalks more is added and for safety surfaces such as schoolyards, play areas and sports areas a lot is added. It produces quite a soft surface so if someone falls they're less likely to hurt themselves. There's still some places which burn old tires but the trend now towards recycling them.
U are right ,but it has been blocked by the environmentalist for a long time,a lot of there reason just doesn't make sense.
they do use them for fuel...some municipalities burn them to generate electricity, they get recycled into asphalt, and you see them all the time in playgrounds
If there really is a chance that would work, and you are really passionately committed to making it happen, then you should go out and do the development, set up a company, get investors, and do the work. Don't just sit at your computer and complain how other people should do things while you sit at your computer and do nothing. If it will get done it will get done by people. You can be one of those people.
Old rubber can't be turned into oil but it can be burned in place of oil. It is not easy to clean up the soot, and noxious gasses produced by burning tires so for now we will find other ways to recycle the tires.
The recycling process hasn't been perfected. However, some have suggested storing used tires in the ocean (in an artificial reef) for a few decades until we get a chance to improve the process.
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