Removal of No2 on Active Carbons Obtained from Waste Tires

Introduction The production of scrap tires only in the EU, USA and Japan is around 6 million tones per year. As the associated automotive industries grow the huge quantity of waste tires presently produced in the world will certainly increase in the future [1]. Thus the disposal of scrap tires becomes a serious environmental problem. The production of activated carbons from solid wastes is one of the most environment-friendly solutions by transforming negative–valued wastes to valuable materials. Waste tires have a high content of volatile matter as well as fixed carbon that makes them an interesting solid as a fuel for energy production or hydrogenation processes and moreover in pyrolysis processes to obtain different fractions of solid, liquid, and gaseous products [2]. The product obtained by pyrolysis of material in which around 30-40% is the rubber from tire, could be a suitable precursor for activated carbon production. The activated carbons produced from rubber tire could have commercial value in the water purification e.g. in dissolving organics and toxic compounds, dechlorization, dye removal, municipal drinking water treatment, as well as in the air purification e.g. volatile inorganic and organic removal, solvent recovery, gas desulfurization, etc. [2,3] Moreover they can be useful in special application such as batteries, fuel cells, and others such as cigarette filters and food industry. The main aim of the study was to obtain active carbon adsorbents from waste tires by their treatment with CO2 or KOH and test the adsorbents obtained in the process of nitrogen dioxide removal. Also the effects of the pyrolysis temperature on the sorption properties of the char adsorbents obtained were analysed. Pyrolysed and active carbon samples obtained were tested for NO2 adsorption in dry conditions.