THERMOLYSIS AND KINETICS OF SCRAP TYRE AND BAGASSE FOR ENERGY UTILIZATION

Abstract

The increase of energy demand has brought concern to find alternative fuel that will at
least sustain the requirement. Bagasse and scrap tyre are waste generated in our industrial
activities, which can be used in energy production to subsidize the demand. This paper, aim
to study the decomposition behaviour and kinetics of biomass (bagasse) and scrap tyre as
preliminary stage of fuel sample analysis to be considered for energy production in
gasification/combustion or pyrolysis facilities. The behaviour demonstrated with
thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA), shows that all samples have high volatile amount
release, 84.21% for bagasse and 85.08% for scrap tyre, which means all are suitable for
pyrolysis. However, scrap tyre is most suitable for gasification or combustion due to its
high energy content, high ash content and low moisture than bagasse. The determined
kinetic parameter were activation energy (E) and pre-exponential factor (A) for
hemicellulose/oil as first release composite and cellulose/elastomer as second composite of
the analyzed bagasse/scrap tyre samples. The hemicelluloses of bagasse exhibited highest
value of activation energy and pre-exponential factor (E=178.191 kJ/mol, and
A=1.74×10 16 ) than oil of scrap tyre (E=41.113 kJ/mol, and A= 495.5), which means
bagasse is suitable candidate for gasification process due to high operating temperature.
With this respect of the study, all candidates may be suitable for pyrolysis or
gasification/combustion process. However, for environmental consideration scrap tyre is
not suitable due to high sulphur (S) and nitrogen (N) content resulting to high emission of
SO X and NO X .