Work

Performance comparison of tire pyrolysis oils in hydrotreating toward high-quality fuel

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Hydrotreating is a process that uses existing refining facilities to upgrade waste tire pyrolysis oils (TPOs), containing high amounts of bio-carbon, by reducing heteroatoms (e,g,. nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen) and aromatics content. A Ni-Mo/γAl2O3 catalyst was used to assess reactivity differences between three TPOs and a petroleum straight run vacuum gas oil (VGO) in a semibatch reactor at 140 bar for four hours at three different temperatures ranging from 352 °C to 397 °C. HDN performance for TPOs is higher than their VGO counterpart despite their larger content of nitrogen in the feed. HDS conversion is similar for all the studied TPOs with temperature having a stronger effect on VGO. For HDO, residual oxygen was low (<0.1 wt%) for all TPOs. The conversion of aromatic carbon content for TPOs (10 – 25 %) is significantly reduced compared to VGO (55 %). On a feedstock basis, VGO, containing less light hydrocarbons (370 °C -), yields higher amounts of bottom residues (370 °C +). Meanwhile, TPOs produce more naphtha and kerosene products as temperatures increase. For all tested feeds, this study confirms that hydrogen consumption is strongly dependent on initial feed composition.

Source: Chemical Engineering Journal

DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2025.165115