Investigation of gaseous and solid pollutants emitted from waste tire combustion at different temperatures

Abstract

Consumer society requires the continuous evolution of products, thus generating a lot of waste. The automotive industry has also undergone significant development, generating 1.5 billion used tires worldwide every year. Landfilling of tires is prohibited and their disposal is therefore a major issue. Although many studies deal with the utilization of tire as a fuel, there is limited research that would specifically describe the relationship between pollutant emissions from tire combustion and the relationship between emitted pollutants and firebox temperature. Based on this, this work aims to investigate flue gas concentrations (CO, CO2, NOx, and SO2) and solid pollutants from tire burned in a lab-scale electrical furnace at firebox temperature from 650 to 900 °C. The decomposition of the CaCO3 filler during the combustion of the tire has been detected with thermal analytical investigation and combustion experiments. In the case of the CO flue gas pollutant, a second maximum concentration is observed due to the presence of CaCO3. With the increasing firebox temperature, the size of solid particles decreases, and the mesh structure formed becomes denser. At the same time, the concentration of emitted solid PAHs decreases, dominated by aromatic compounds with smaller number of rings. However, the variation of firebox temperature does not affect the amount of benzo(b)fluoranthene and fluoranthene relative to the total concentration.