TYGRE

High added value materials from waste tyre gasification residues

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'This project is focused on the waste tyres recycling and promotes a thermal process mainly devoted to the production of ceramic materials. The disposal of waste tyres represents a relevant problem within the waste management strategy of the European Community and, despite the attempts of reusing waste tyre in many different ways, a relevant fraction (nearly 23%) is still landfilled. Pyrolysis and gasification are a promising way for alternative high-efficiency material and energy production, since both the processes provide a gaseous and a liquid fraction easily usable as fuels or chemical sources. Nevertheless, besides these encouraging preliminary remarks, the experiences on both pilot and industrial scale have shown that without a valuable exploitation of the solid by-product (char), the whole economic balance of the process is not advantageous and therefore the process is not sustainable. The gasification/pyrolysis treatment of waste tyres, apart from a high hydrogen rich syngas, brings to a very high carbon-rich char fraction, which has been tested in the past as a semi-reinforcing filler for new tyres or as an active carbon. Nevertheless, despite the recent technological advances, it is still unclear whether there is a market demand for this product. On these bases, the main idea of the proposal consists in redirecting the gasification process towards the material recycling, by coupling a second thermal process, dedicated to the plasma synthesis of silicon carbide, to the preliminary waste tyres gasification. The overall strategy of the project’s workplan mainly consists of three levels: a.the development of a sustainable recycling process for the waste tyre treatments, with the final construction of a prototype plant; b.the sustainability assessment, in terms of impact analyses on economical, ecological and social aspects; c.the market requirements analysis and the future perspectives in view of potential stakeholders, and the diffusion of the results.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An EU-funded project developed an innovative thermal process to turn waste tyres into energy and ceramic materials.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Tyres are made primarily from natural and synthetic rubber (consisting of hydrocarbon polymers) along with other compounds and materials such as carbon black, metal oxides and steel. Despite the attempts of reusing them in many different ways, a relevant fraction (nearly 13%) of waste tyres is still landfilled.

Pyrolysis and gasification are a promising way for high-efficiency material and energy recovery; nevertheless, inability to exploit the solid by product does not make recycling cost effective or sustainable. In this frame the EU-funded project 'High added value materials from waste tyre gasification residues' (http://www.tygre.eu (TYGRE)) was designed to expand the material outputs of tyre recycling by providing a valuable material with a broad array of applications, silicon carbide (SiC).

A prototype plant, able to treat 20 kg/h of scrap tyres, has been assembled at ENEA Research Centre in Southern Italy and the proposed process has been tested.

Furthermore, thanks to the multidisciplinary partnership, a sustainability analysis allowed the assessment of the pilot plant and also a scaled-up model of the technology, through Life-cycle assessment (LCA), life-cycle costing and social LCA studies.

To improve the powder grade and enlarge the range of market applications, project partners developed a new purification method to produce high quality SiC powders. Results demonstrated that the SiC produced by TYGRE project (TyGReSiC) is suitable for industrial purposes.

From the product point of view, TyGReSiC is a valuable material for a broad range of applications. At the end of 2012 the global SiC capacity highly increased, rising up to 2,500,000 tonnes per year. The market is mainly shared by the following sectors: Metallurgical Industry (refractory and foundry) 60%; Abrasive and Ceramics 28 %; Electro-products 12 %.

The grade and price increase going down in the list, ranging from a few euros per tonnes to hundreds of thousands of euro per tonnes. TyGReSiC was successfully tested in the formulation of structural ceramics and membranes.

Very good results (sintered density was 98 % of theoretical density), in comparison with commercial powders, have been obtained. The mechanical properties of sintered TyGReSiC were similar to commercial SiC powder considered as the benchmark, so it can be concluded that TyGReSiC is suitable for structural applications.

Tests demonstrated that the TyGReSiC powder could be successfully used in the production of membranes for water filtration. Other applications are under investigation.