Experiment on the swelling properties and semi-coke thermogravimetric analysis of waste tires

The swelling behaviors of scrap tires as raw materials were studied, in which the scrap tires were immersed in six organic solvents, such as dimethylsulfoxide, n-pentanol, isopentanol, ethyl acetate, glycerine and dichloromethane, and the thermogravimetric analysis of the semi-coke from scrap tires was also carried out. During the process of soaking scrap tires in the organic solvents, the results showed that by comparison of the six organic solvents, there was a maximum degree of equilibrium swelling of about 1.5 g/g for dichloromethane at atmospheric temperature. The kinetic model for the above process was consistent with the pseudo-first order kinetic model, of which the kinetic constant (k) was about 0.306 h^-1. According to the results of SEM and specific surface area, the semi-coke derived from scrap tires soaked in dichloromethane had more pores and a larger specific surface area. Through the kinetic analysis for the TG-DTG curves of the semi-coke, the results showed that within the temperature range of weightlessness, the reaction order (n), the activation energy (E_a) and the pre-exponential factor (lnA) were about 10, 245.6 kJ/mol and 37.5 h^-1, respectively.