Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

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Fuel
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Optimisation of particle size in waste tyre pyrolysis

Adetoyese Oyedun a, Ka-Leung Lam a, Malte Fittkau a,b, Chi-Wai Hui a,
a
b

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
Biochemical and Chemical Engineering Department, Technische Universitt Dortmund, 44221 Dortmund, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 July 2011
Received in revised form 15 September 2011
Accepted 21 September 2011
Available online 14 October 2011
Keywords:
Pyrolysis
Particle size
Energy
Optimisation
Tyre

a b s t r a c t
During pyrolysis of waste tyre, the operating parameters such as tyre composition, the process temperature, the heating rate and the particle size affect the result of the pyrolysis. Some of these parameters have
been closely considered but the particle size of the waste tyre is often ignored. The goal of this paper is to
study the effect of particle size in waste tyre pyrolysis under different heating approaches and to use optimization techniques to determine the optimized particle size for each scenario. In this paper, the size of the
waste tyre particle is considered as a major factor in determining the magnitude of the overall energy used
as well as the completion time of the pyrolysis reaction. Simulations were conducted to compare the effects
of the particle size on the completion time and the overall energy usage under different heating rates and
operational strategies. Shredding energy needed to reduce waste tyre particles was also included into the
calculation of the overall energy consumption. Optimisation of the particle size was conducted under a
number of specied maximum completion times and heating rates. This study conrms the trade-off
between the overall energy used and the completion time. It also shows the impact of using some optimisation techniques to determine the optimized particle size for different heating approaches.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The disposal of waste tyre has become a major environmental
concern globally and this can be attributed to the increase in automobile usage as well as population especially in areas of large population and highly industrialised nations [15]. The nuisance caused
by the waste tyres is majorly because they are not bio-degradable
and can last for several decades if no proper handling is carried out.
Several million tonnes of waste tyres are generated yearly all
over the world, about 2.5 million tonnes in North America, Japan
produces 1 million tonne, and European Community produces
more than 2.5 million tonnes [14]. In China region, the case is
not different especially due to the population and extremely large
number of automobiles. China waste tyre generation was expected
to be 5.2 million tonnes in 2010 and thereby becoming one of the
world largest producers of waste tyres [2,6].
The energy content or xed carbon content of waste tyres can
be exploited by thermo chemical processes via pyrolysis into a
more valuable fuel and useful chemicals. Pyrolysis is the process
by which organic substances are reduced by subjecting a material
to heat in a reduced or no oxygen environment giving rise to condensable liquids or tars, char and few amounts of volatiles (gaseous
products) [1,4]. Other advantage of pyrolysis is that the char which
majorly forms the residue after the pyrolysis process is readily
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kehui@ust.hk (C-W. Hui).
0016-2361/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2011.09.046

used for activated carbon production [7,8]. Pyrolysis is considered

due to the high volatile and xed carbon content of waste tyre as
well as the high heating value which is more than that of biomass
and coal [4,9]. Despite the fact that pyrolysis is considered a major
alternative to exploit the useful chemicals and resources from
waste tyre, the process is still not in high usage and this is largely
due to the high amount of energy required for the process, various
attempts have been made by researchers to make tyre pyrolysis an
economic viable process [1,3,5,10].
During pyrolysis of waste tyre, the operating parameters such
as tyre composition, the process temperature, process heating rate
and the particle size interacts with the pyrolysis kinetics and inuence the result of the pyrolysis [5]. One important operating
parameter that is seldom investigated is the particle size, though
not important for fast pyrolysis but it can inuence the slow pyrolysis process. In the fast pyrolysis study by [11], particle size only
inuence the yield of the products at a size lower than 1mm and
as the size increases, the yield does not change with respect to
the size. Also in the fast pyrolysis study of linseed by [12], particle
size of the feedstock had no signicant effect on the liquid yield
due to the high heat transfer rate during the pyrolysis. Therefore
for fast pyrolysis process, the essential feature is a very high heating and heat transfer rates which requires a nely ground feed
[13]. On the other hand, low heating rate in slow pyrolysis can
cause a great heat transfer resistance for large particle size [14]
and therefore inuencing the completion time and overall energy
used.

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A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

Nomenclature

ai
aT
aT,f
cj
t
T
ni
A
E
R
b

xi
a
b
c
aH

extent of reaction for mass loss reaction i

overall mass loss fraction
nal total mass loss fraction
extent of reaction for mass loss reaction j
reaction time (s)
temperature (K)
order of reaction
pre-exponential factor (s1)
activation energy (J/mol)
universal gas constant (J/mol K)
heating rate (C/min)
mass loss contribution by mass loss reaction i
quadratic coefcient for the mass loss contribution
(min2/C2)
linear coefcient for the mass loss contribution (min/C)
constant term for the mass loss contribution
quadratic coefcient for the heat of reaction (J min2/
kg C2)

Quite a number of models have been developed and applied to

waste tyre pyrolysis and some operating conditions have been considered. However, the effects of particle size on pyrolysis performance of waste tyre has not been subjected to comprehensive
study and research into its model has not been considered in literatures so the parameter is often neglected or not considered in
waste tyre pyrolysis. Majority of the few who have explored the effect of tyre particle size has been mostly experimental based and
waste tyre particle size model is still an unexplored area of waste
tyre pyrolysis.
To further prove that the signicance of waste tyre particle size
during the pyrolysis cannot be overlook, some experimental studies on tyre pyrolysis show that particle size is one of the operating
conditions that can largely inuence the quantity of heat required
to complete the pyrolysis [10] and since pyrolysis is an endothermic process, the temperature prole occurs along the diameter of
the particle [15]. Intra-particle transport which inuences the global rate during pyrolysis is caused by increase in particle size [16]
and Gao et al. [2] observed that an increase in particle size can subsequently increase the temperature gradient inside the particles.
In contrast to research on waste tyre particle size model, several
works has been done on the particle size consideration in wood
and biomass pyrolysis and a close look on the different literatures
justify the importance of such consideration in waste tyre pyrolysis. Investigations into the effects of biomass particle size on the
product yield, heat input and performance has been studied by
[11,14,17,18]. It is observed that the cell contents in small particles
releases much easier than the big particles and making yield to decrease as the average biomass particle size is increasing [11]. Particle size effects on mixed solid waste pyrolysis was described as
both systematic and substantial [14] and their research shows that
the effects can be minimised by increasing the pyrolysis temperature but trading off between the amount of energy required for the
process is still a great concern.
The inuence of particle size on different materials (Olive
waste, bagasse and birch) had been studied extensively by [19].
The study shows that particle size inuences the char yield of olive
waste, birch and bagasse, the char yield of olive waste reduces
from 17% to 14.6% when the particle size increases from 0.5
1.0mm while the char yield of birch decreases about 20% when
the particle size decreases from 1.0 0.5mm. Apart from the char
yield, [19] also shows that the particle size inuences the reactivity

bH
cH
H
Cp
k
r
Dr
h
TR
Tbulk
qshredding

linear coefcient for the heat of reaction (J min/kg C)

constant term for the heat of reaction (J/kg)
heat of reaction (J/kg)
specic heat capacity (J/kg K)
thermal conductivity (W/m K)
particle radius (m)
layer thickness (m)
density of tyre (kg/m3)
convective heat transfer coefcient (W/m2 K)
particle surface temperature (K)
bulk temperature (K)
shredding energy (J/kg-tyre)

Subscript
i
j
tyre
carbon

mass loss reaction i

exothermic reaction j
tyre
char

of the char and the produced gas composition for all the materials
considered. The reactivity of char for the materials increases when
the particle size is smaller. In an earlier work [5], several aspect of
operating conditions has been considered and the effects of the
heating rate and target temperature on the pyrolysis performance
have been studied. Other major operating condition which can
greatly inuence pyrolysis is tyre particle size. Small particle size
can give rise to faster heat transfer during pyrolysis and it will effect a reduction in completion time during pyrolysis but on the
other hand, the fast heat transfer can also triggers more endothermic reactions which increases the overall energy usage for the
reaction. The energy required to shred waste tyre into ner particles is also a major concern and adequate strategy must be applied
so that the shredding energy is accounted for in the overall energy
usage. To explore the option of different particle sizes and to make
pyrolysis a cost effective commercial energy process, studies on
the effective optimisation of the operating condition need to be
done and to come up with the best optimised particle size.
The objective of this paper, therefore, is to continue the previous work on integration of kinetics and heat ow modelling of
waste tyre pyrolysis by studying the effects of particle size on
the overall energy usage and the completion time. The shredding
energy is added into the model which makes comparison between
particle sizes more signicant. The major contribution of this work
is to demonstrate the different optimisation strategies in waste
tyre pyrolysis using different case studies of particle size.
2. Methodology
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential thermal
analysis (DTA) techniques were performed on the steel tyre
samples using the machine TGA/DTA 92 Setaram II to study the

Fig. 1. Proposed tyre pyrolysis mechanism [3].

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A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

pyrolysis kinetics. The samples were heated from room temperature to 600 C with nitrogen gas used as the carrier gas at xed
owrate (16.7 ml/min). Four heating rates (2, 5, 10 and 20 C/
min) were used and the obtained kinetics and heat ow parameters were employed to build the pyrolysis model.

m K), Cp is the specic heat capacity, r is the radius (mm) and T is

the temperature (K) at the layer.
The variation of the heat capacity, the thermal conductivity, the
heats of mass loss reaction and the heats of exothermic reaction
are given by

3. Tyre pyrolysis model

The model simulates the pyrolysis of a single tyre particle under

a bulk heating environment based on the kinetics obtained from
thermal analysis. The followings assumptions are in place:

Cp

(i) The pyrolysing tyre particle is spherical.

(ii) The mode of heat transfer within the particle is by conduction only.
(iii) No shrinkage of particle during pyrolysis
(iv) During the pyrolysis, the volatiles are produced and are
assumed to leave the pyrolysis environment immediately.
(v) The heat loss from the ue gas is neglected.
3.1. Kinetic model
The details of the kinetics framework were explained extensively in previous work [5], it is based on the tyre pyrolysis mechanism by Senneca et al. [3].
The mechanism as shown in Fig. 1 consists of three mass loss
equations (R1, R3a and R3c) which are majorly endothermic reactions and two exothermic reactions (R2 and R3b) which are majorly exothermic and contributes to the exothermic peaks in the
DTA study.
The pyrolysis kinetic is governed by:



dai
Ei
1  ai ni
Ai exp 
dt
RT


dcj
Ej
Aj exp 
1  cj nj
dt
RT

aT

xi ai

2
3

xi ai b2 bi b ci

where ai and cj represents the extent of reaction for mass loss reaction i and exothermic reaction j respectively, t is the reaction time
(s), T is the temperature (K), A is the pre-exponential factor (s1),
E is the activation energy (J/mol), R is the universal gas constant
(J/mol K), ni is the order of reaction for mass loss reaction i, aT is
the overall mass loss fraction, xi is the mass loss contribution by
mass loss reaction i, ai, bi and ci are the quadratic coefcient
(min2/C2), the linear coefcient (min/C) and the constant term
respectively for mass loss reaction i, b is the heating rate (C/min)
and subscript i and j denote for mass loss reaction i and exothermic
reaction j respectively.
3.2. Heat transfer model

aT;f  aT

at;f

ktyre

aT;f  aT

at;f

C p;tyre

where Hi and Hj represent the heat of mass loss reaction and exothermic reaction respectively, k is the thermal conductivity (W/

aT
C
aT;f p;carbon

7
8

Hj aH;j b2 bH;j b cH;j

respectively.
aT,f is the nal total mass loss fraction, Cp,tyre is the specic heat
capacity of tyre, Cp,carbon is the specic heat capacity of char, ktyre is
the thermal conductivity of tyre, kcarbon is the thermal conductivity
of char, aH,i, bH,i and cH,i are the quadratic coefcient (J min2/kg C2),
the linear coefcient (J min/kg C) and the constant term (J/kg)
respectively for mass loss reaction i, and aH,j, bH,j and cH,j are the
quadratic coefcient (J min2/kg C2), the linear coefcient (J min/
kg C) and the constant term (J/kg) respectively for exothermic
reaction j.
3.3. Numerical solution
Imposing the boundary conditions,

@T
hT R  T bulk
@r

@T 
B:C:2 :  0
@r r0

B:C:1 : k

10

11

where h is the convective heat transfer coefcient (W/m2 K), TR is

the particle surface temperature (K) and Tbulk is the bulk temperature (K).
The energy conservation equation, Eq. (5), is solved numerically
by implicit nite difference method using second-order CrankNicolson implicit scheme [20]. Tables 13 summarise the kinetics
parameters and physical properties used for the simulation.
4. Modications to the tyre pyrolysis model
The model used for the earlier works was solved using the GNU
Octave software and due to the robustness of using the optimisation toolbox, MATLAB [23] was introduced which apart from
the optimisation advantage, it also helps to improve the execution
performance to almost 400% compared to Octave. Based on the
objective of this work, some modications were introduced into
the earlier code. For tyre particles to be shredded into smaller sizes,
Table 1
Model parameters for the mass loss reactions.
Parameters

Hi aH;i b2 bH;i b cH;i

The energy conservation equation is



@T
k @ 2 T 2 k @T
1 X
@ ai
1

H
x
i
i
@t qCp @r2 r qCp @r Cp
Cp
@t
i
X  @ cj 
Hj

@t
i

aT
k
aT;f carbon

Ai, s1
Ei, J/mol
ni
ai, min2/C2
bi, min/C
ci
aH,i, J min2/kg C2
bH,i, J min2/kg C2
CH,i, J/kg

Reaction
1

3a

3c

7.71  104
71.54  103
1.34
0
0
0.05675
3.5091  104
9.52196  105
6.74392  106

8.38  106
118.17  103
0.89
1.017  103
5.764  103
2.9384  101
4.014  103
1.4166  105
6.2888  104

2.07  107
128.76  103
0.90
1.190  103
9.762  103
2.2795  101
5.449  103
9.5465  104
2.4193  105

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A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

Table 2
Model parameters for the exothermic reactions.
Parameters

Ai, s1
Ei, J/mol
ni
aH,j, J min2/kg C2
bH,j, J min2/kg C2
CH,j J/kg

Reaction
2

3b

8.38  106
103.0543  103
1.0930
2.5781  103
7.3836  104
6.03465  105

4.16  106
88.0612  103
1.6966
1.1998  103
3.8730  104
3.38197  105

Table 3
Other model parameters.

Fig. 2. Mass loss prole for waste tyre particle.

Parameters

Value/correlation

Time step, dt (s)

Number of layer
Bulk mass (kg)
Bulk heat capacity (J/kg C)
Initial density of tyre (kg/m3)
Thermal conductivity of tyre (J/m K s)
Thermal conductivity of carbon (J/m K s)
Specic heat capacity of tyre (J/kg C)
Specic heat capacity of carbon (J/kg C)

2
101
0.1
2400
1100
0.38
0.20
1900 + 3(T (C)  25) [21]
1003.2 + 2.09T (C) [22]

a considerable amount of energy has to be used. Finer particles require more energy to be shredded. If the particle is too small, it is
possible for the shredding energy to overwhelm the energy saved
in the pyrolysis. Therefore there is need to account for the shredding energy.
In order to have a detailed comparison of the energy requirement for the pyrolysis of tyre with different particle sizes, the energy required to reduce the particle size is important to be
included in the model.
Some researches on the size reduction of general mixed waste
[24] show that the energy required to produce very small particles
increases exponentially with the decreasing radius of the particles
due to the forces and number of cuts. In the research on the feasibility of processing scrap tyres to crumb rubber a correlation for
the shredding energy of tyres is stated [25]. Therefore the number
of cuts to reduce a cubic particle from the original length of L to the
new length of S is calculated by;



L
cuts 3  1
S

Fig. 3. Plot of completion time of waste tyre particle size 1050 mm at isothermal
condition.

12

The energy required for the total size reduction follows roughly
the number of cuts and leads to the correlation for the shredding
energy qshredding in KW h/t with the particle radius in inch is given
as;

qshredding 97:91  2r0:222

13

To be able to add the shredding energy to the pyrolysis energy,

the units conversion must correlate and therefore efforts were
made to calculate the qshredding in J/kg-tyre using the following
relation;

qshredding 97:91  3600  78:74r0:222

14

5. Discussion
After the modication to the tyre pyrolysis model, the model was
simulated and examined to study the effect of tyre particle size on
the completion time and the overall energy usage. The temperature
target of 500 C was employed for both isothermal and adiabatic
cases. For the isothermal case, the particle is pyrolysed inside a batch

Fig. 4. Plot of completion time of waste tyre particle size 1050 mm at adiabatic
condition.

reactor, which increases the temperature from the initial temperature of 30 C to the target temperature of 500 C at a predened heating rate (b = 5 C/min and 10 C/min). When the target temperature
is reached in the reactor, the reactor temperature is kept at the target
temperature until the pyrolysis is completed. For the adiabatic case,
when the target temperature is reached, the heat supply is removed
until the pyrolysis is completed.
5.1. Effect of particle size on completion time
One important advantage of studying the effect of particle size
on pyrolysis is that it greatly affect the completion time of the

A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

process. Slow pyrolysis is known to be completed in close to 1 h or

more compared to fast and ash pyrolysis which completes within
milliseconds and a few seconds respectively [26].
The pyrolysis process is said to be completed if the total mass
loss fraction equals the sum of the mass loss contribution throughout the particle layers as described in Eq. (3) above.
Fig. 2 shows the mass loss prole for tyre particle and the completion time for this case is 1.09 h (arrowed in the gure).
Figs. 3 and 4 show the effect of the waste tyre particle size on
the completion time for particle sizes 1050 mm at a heating rate
of 5 C/min and 10 C/min for both isothermal and adiabatic cases.
The completion time for the pyrolysis process decreases by
58.9% and 37.60% for 5 C/min and 10 C/min respectively for the
isothermal case when the particle size was reduced from 50 mm
to 10 mm while the completion time reduces by 79.97% and
42.52% for 5 C/min and 10 C/min respectively for the adiabatic
case considering the same particle size range.
From the plot, we have a shorter completion time when the particle size is small because the heat transfer barrier reduces as the
particle size gets smaller. One important consideration from the
gures is the difference between the completion time for the isothermal and adiabatic cases. The difference between the two cases
at 5 C/min was not much even at large particle size of 50 mm but
there was appreciable difference in the completion at 10 C/min.
The difference becomes more obvious at a tyre particle of 30 mm
and the difference increases to 51.3% at a tyre particle size of
50 mm. Therefore, considering the nished time alone, it can be
concluded that when the heating rate of 10 C/min is used, isothermal case is more preferred unless a small tyre particle size is used
which can then makes the adiabatic case to be considered. It must
be noted however that the overall energy used for the pyrolysis has
not been considered in this case.
5.2. Effect of particle size on overall energy used (pyrolysis heat and
shredding energy)
As stated earlier, overall energy consumption for pyrolysis is still
on a large side and this makes the process less efcient which makes
it a non-considered solution for the waste tyre problem. Figs. 5 and 6
show the effect of the waste tyre particle size on the overall energy
used for particle sizes 1050 mm at a heating rate of both 5 C/min
and 10 C/min for both isothermal and adiabatic cases.
From Figs. 5 and 6 above, the overall energy required for the
pyrolysis process to complete for both cases reduces as the particle
size increases. For the isothermal case, the energy required reduces
by 13.7% and 22.1% from 10 mm to 50 mm for b = 5 C/min and
10 C/min respectively. While for the adiabatic case, the energy re-

Fig. 5. Plot of overall energy used of waste tyre particle size 1050 mm at
isothermal condition.

421

Fig. 6. Plot of overall energy used of waste tyre particle size 1050 mm at adiabatic
condition.

quired reduces by 22.5% and 37.6% from 10 mm to 50 mm for

b = 5 C/min and 10 C/min respectively.
The isothermal case requires the tyre particles to be heated up to the
target temperature and then maintained till the completion of the
pyrolysis process. However, more energy is required to hold the temperature constant. For the adiabatic pyrolysis, the energy to hold the
reactor at a constant time after heating up is not required. This cause
a lower overall energy input, but when the temperature within the
reactor decreases the heat-ow into the particle decreases as well.
The intersection in Fig. 6 shows that for adiabatic heating approach, irrespective of the heating rate of 5 C/min and 10 C/
min, the overall energy usage is the same for tyre particle size of
35.43 mm though the completion time is different as shown in
Fig. 4. This is expected based on the denition of adiabatic heating
approach earlier stated. Therefore for overall energy usage or completion time, there will always be a particle size that tends to be
the same irrespective of the heating rate of 5 C/min and 10 C/
min. Therefore, especially for larger particle, for both cases, the energy required was reduced but the time to complete the pyrolysis
subsequently increases.
Fig. 7 gives the 3D plot for the overall energy and completion
time for both isothermal and adiabatic conditions.
5.3. Optimisation of particle size
Based on the case studies on the effect of particle size on the
completion time and the overall energy used, it is clearly noticed
that using small particle size helps in reducing the pyrolysis completion time but also has the effect of high overall energy used,
therefore nding the minimum overall energy required considering a maximum in the total completion time is the overall goal
to make the process more energy efcient as well as economically
feasible. To achieve this, the optimisation toolbox in MATLAB was
used. The overall function was used for the optimisation with the
heating rate and the particle radius as the input and the energy required and the nish time as the output value.
In order to achieve an optimum solution, the nature of the optimisation problem and its constraints must be considered and this
determines the type of optimisation technique to be used. Optimisation mostly requires adaptation and some kind of different approaches because the problems to solve are very different and
therefore the requirements of solvers are different. The nature of
the objective function has to be determined as linear, quadratic,
least squares, smooth nonlinear or non-smooth. The kind of constraints reaches from bound, linear, general smooth up to discrete.
The waste tyre particle pyrolysis model is a non-smooth function
with boundary constraints.

422

A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

Fig. 7. 3D plot of the pyrolysis result for overall energy and the completion time (a) isothermal condition and (b) adiabatic condition.

Table 4
Optimised particle size result for the particle pyrolysis at different tmax. at xed
heating rate of 10 C/min.

Fig. 8. Optimised particle size with maximum completion time plot at 10 C/min.

Fig. 9. Optimised particle size with maximum completion time plot at 5 C/min.

The fmincon, pattern search and simulannealbnd solvers in

MATLAB were used. Based on the nature of the objective function,
the solvers had difculties in nding the global optimum and the
simulannealbnd provided the best results. The only bottleneck
with simulannealbnd solver is the selection of a very good starting
point and after various trials, starting points were set for each optimisation conducted. Two case studies were considered and the results were analysed accordingly.

tmax (h)

Radius (mm)

Overall energy usage (105 J/kg-tyre)

1.0
1.25
1.50
1.75
2.00
2.25
2.50

17.80
26.30
31.90
35.70
38.30
40.50
42.10

12.013
10.795
9.934
9.375
9.020
8.744
8.549

Table 5
Optimised particle size result for the particle pyrolysis at different tmax. at xed
heating rate of 5 C/min.
tmax (h)

Radius (mm)

Overall energy usage (105 J/kg-tyre)

1.50
1.75
2.00
2.25
2.50
2.75

10.80
25.60
35.00
41.80
47.00
51.00

10.992
10.355
9.702
9.143
8.712
8.394

5.3.1. Case study 1: optimisation of particle size at xed heating rate

Two trade-offs are involved which are completion time and the
overall energy used by the waste tyre particle during pyrolysis,
therefore one of this trade-off must be set to the desire target
and then varies the other variable to determine the least value
for the second trade-off. In this case study, the boundaries of the
pyrolysis have to be dened and different maximum completion
time was set. The particle size range is selected between 10 and
50 mm while the heating rate range of 5 C/min and 10 C/min
was xed. Based on the nature of the problem considered and
the results obtained earlier, maximum completion times (tmax) of
1, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, 2.0, 2.25 and 2.50 were set for 10 C/min and
maximum completion times (tmax) of 1.50, 1.75, 2.0, 2.25, 2.50
and 2.75 were set for 5 C/min.
The optimised particle size was plotted with the maximum
completion time as shown in Figs. 8 and 9.

A. Oyedun et al. / Fuel 95 (2012) 417424

423

particle size tends to reduce the overall energy used but at a price
of long completion time.
6. Conclusion

Fig. 10. Optimised particle size with maximum completion time at variable heating
rate.

Table 6
Optimised particle size result for the particle pyrolysis at different tmax. at variable
heating rate.
tmax
(h)

Radius
(mm)

Heating rate, b (C/

min)

Overall energy usage (105 J/

kg-tyre)

1.00
1.25
1.50
1.75
2.00
2.25
2.50

13.80
23.20
30.40
35.70
39.80
43.30
46.40

8.774
8.267
8.043
7.956
7.735
7.115
6.953

12.241
11.163
10.251
9.575
9.102
8.796
8.508

Figs. 8 and 9 give a more insight into the trade-off involved in

particle size pyrolysis based on the desired trade-off especially
completion time at different heating rate. They show that heating
rate is also a priority when determining the amount of energy used
during pyrolysis and the optimised particle size changes respectively with the target heating rate. In many pyrolysis industries,
the range of desired completion time is known but which particle
size is the best to require the least amount of energy is the major
concern and therefore, these gures can be applied in the industry
to nd the most suitable particle size when the desired completion
time is known.
The overall energy used for each of the optimised particle size is
given in Tables 4 and 5. As expected, the overall energy used decreases as the particle size and the maximum completion time
increases.

5.3.2. Case study 2: optimisation of particle size at variable heating

rate
From the results in case study 1, heating rate is a major determinant of the optimised particle size. In this case study, the heating rate is also a variable as well as the particle size radius. The
target completion time of 1.00, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, 2.00, 2.25 and
2.50 h were set and the optimisation was run to nd the optimised
heating rate between 5 C/min and 10 C/min and optimised particle size between 10 mm and 50 mm that would require the least
amount of overall energy at the set target completion time.
Fig. 10 shows that the result for the optimised particle size radius and the optimised heating rate. The overall energy used for
the different target completion time is presented in Table 6.
From Fig. 10 and Table 6, the pattern is the same as that of
case study 1 where the particle size increases when the maximum completion time increased. The heating rate also reduces
to accommodate a low amount of overall energy to be used in
the process. So irrespective of the mode of operation, small particle size tends to lower the completion time of pyrolysis but at a
high overall energy due to the shredding energy while large

This research has led to a better understanding of the energy

requirement of waste tyre pyrolysis in dependency of the heating rate and particle size. The effects of the particle size on
the pyrolysis completion time and overall energy used as well
as the added effect of heating rate and the heating approach
(isothermal and adiabatic) have been studied. It can be conrmed that there is a trade-off between the overall energy used
and the completion time. Small particle sizes are capable of
completing the pyrolysis process within a shorter time but the
overall energy required is higher compared with that of larger
particle size.
In order to achieve a low overall energy usage in pyrolysis, different optimisation strategies can be used and some of it has been
demonstrated in this work by varying the particle size and the
heating rate. Desired completion times were specied prior to
the start of the pyrolysis and the corresponding optimised particle
size can be determined from the plots in Figs. 810. This work, unlike other works on particle pyrolysis accounts for the energy required for shredding tyre into different size and the comparison
is more detailed and justied.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from Hong
Kong RGC in form of PhD Fellowship to Oyedun A.O., support from
RGC research Grant (Nos. 613808, 614307) and the Global Power
and Energy Company Limited.
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