Improvement of Devulcanization Yield during Reclamation of Waste Tires
Waste tire recycling has become a bigger environmental problem. Despite regulations waste tires are stockpiled and often are breeding ground for west Nile virus and mosquitoes that cause pandemic. A number of times waste tires are incinerated or pyrolysis. Reclamation of value in the rubber portion of the waste tires may be more profitable and more environmentally benign compared with incineration and fuel use methods. Devulcanization and depolymerization reactions can lead to recovery of polybutadiene and butadiene monomer. Competing parallel reactions after the devulcanization step is studied in more detail. Dynamics of the general Denbigh scheme of reactions in a CSTR is studied. The composition of the species involved is obtained as a function of time from model solutions. A general state space form is proposed for simultaneous series-parallel reactions. Types of instability that may arise depends on the eigenvalues of the system. The Eigenvalues of the sparse matrix indicate that the system is of the integrating type. Solutions can be obtained from the eigenvalues for 7 species. Information from the model solution can be used to optimize the yield of rubber during reclamation of rubber from waste tires.
