Pyrolysis technology has become a widely adopted solution for recycling various kinds of solid waste, especially used tires and plastics. While both tire pyrolysis and plastic pyrolysis adopt the same core working principle: thermal decomposition in an oxygen-free environment, their feedstock characteristics, operational requirements, and end products differ significantly.
Feedstock Characteristics
Tires: Made mainly from natural rubber, synthetic rubber, carbon black, steel wires, textile fibers, and various additives.
Plastics: Composed of synthetic polymers such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), often derived from petrochemicals.
Feedstock Pretreatment
Tires: For batch type pyrolysis machine, it can process the whole waste tires directly without pretreatment; while for semi-continuous and fully continuous pyrolysis machine, we need to draw the steel wire from tires and cut them into small particles.
Plastics: For plastic pyrolysis, we generally need to make some separation because not all plastics can be pyrolyzed, such as PVC and PET, which not only have a very low oil content, but they will also corrode the equipment after pyrolysis, affecting the operation of the equipment.
Pyrolysis Temperature And Time
Tires: Requires relatively higher temperatures (typically around 300–350°C) and longer reaction time due to the tough, rubber-based structure of tires.
Plastics: Usually operates at slightly lower temperatures (around 250–300°C) and processes faster because the structure of plastic is relatively simple.
Product Yield And Quality
| Tire Pyrolysis | Plastic Pyrolysis | |
|---|---|---|
| Oil Yield | 30-52% | 50-90% |
| Final Product | Tire pyrolysis oil, carbon black, steel wire, syn-gas | Plastic pyrolysis oil, carbon black, syn-gas |
| Oil Quality | Lower heating value, higher oil density and stronger odor and color; | Higher heating value, lower oil density and better oil odor and color; |
Though there are some difference between tire pyrolysis and plastic pyrolysis, but the final obtained pyrolysis oil and carbon black from pyrolysis machine both have wide applications:
Pyrolysis oil: a kind of heavy oil, can be used in heavy oil machinery, such as cement plant, steel plant, glass plant, or be refined into non-standard diesel;
Carbon black: can be used as heating energy, or after refining to be used as inks or to make new products;
In a word, both waste tires and plastics can be recycled with the pyrolysis machine, and we can obtain the valuable by-products, if you are interested in the pyrolysis machine project, just feel free to contact us! With abundant project experience, Huayin can provide customized scheme for you.
