Distillation and desulfurization of tire pyrolysis oil

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The disposal for waste/used tires is a serious concern because it requires a lot of space, and dumped tires are an environmental hazard and a home for diseases. With increasing growth worldwide, almost 1 billion tires are discarded each year. One of the major areas to capitalize on this waste is conversion of waste tires to energy. One of the processes to convert waste tire to liquid fuel is pyrolysis. However, the pyrolysis fuel contains 1.0-1.4 wt.% sulfur, which needs to be lowered before it can be used as fuel. As per US Environmental Protection Agency, 15ppm sulfur is permitted in diesel transportation fuel. The major desulfurization process adopted by refineries is the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. It is a catalytic process at high temperatures (350-400 °C) and pressure (7-10 MPa) in the presence of hydrogen. However, the expensive infrastructure for HDS and availability of hydrogen at the tire pyrolysis sites is a major concern. Therefore, this work proposes an oxidative desulfurization (ODS) process, which uses chemical solvents and adsorbents instead of hydrogen. The tire pyrolysis oil will be fractionated using spinning band distillation into gasoline, diesel, naphtha and bottoms. The diesel and naphtha fractions will be treated using an ODS process with or without catalyst and adsorbents. The treated oil will be tested for change in sulfur, paraffins, olefins and aromatics content post treatment. It is proposed that the designed ODS process will be able to remove more that 99% sulfur from diesel fraction of tire pyrolysis oil and will produce fuel suitable for use in the transportation industry.