Characterization of Waste Tire Rubber and Standard Malaysian Rubber (SMR 20) as Potential Raw Materials for Pyrolysis

Rubber tire is a very useful product that is mainly used in the automotive industry. However, the used rubber tires that are no longer useful for vehicles due to punctures or wear become a problematic waste. One way to reduce the waste rubber tire is by recycling the product. Different methods have been developed over time to find the best way for recycling the waste tires. One of these methods is pyrolysis that allows the conversion of the waste tire rubber into valuable chemical products. This project evaluated the use of the rubber tire as a potential raw material for pyrolysis. The samples of waste tire were pyrolysed at different temperatures, to see the effect of temperature on the product yield. The temperatures used for the pyrolysis were 4500C, 5000C, and 5500C. Each set of temperature will be tested three times to get the average of product yield. From the pyrolysis experiment, it shows that the best result for oil yield is at 5000C and decreasing after the temperature is increased. Before the pyrolysis of waste tire, elemental analysis was conducted to find the initial composition of waste tire. The elemental analysis was conducted using CHNS for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur content. The analysis showed that the sulfur content in the waste tire is 2.30% and the main component is carbon, with the composition of 83.57%. Thermal decomposition of waste tire was tested using thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), which showed that the waste tire completely decomposes between 450 to 5000C and Py-GC-MS was used to obtain the composition of waste tire, mainly showing that the highest component of the waste tire is 1,3-butadiene. The yield of the products of waste tire pyrolysis, the char, oil, and gas, were calculated for the yield for each temperature and the yield vs. temperature graph was plotted. The composition of the product was tested based on the temperature and product yield. The gas yield was analyzed using GC-TCD for the composition of non-condensable gases. The char and oil was tested using CHNS for the composition of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur.