Waste tires to blue hydrogen by integrating plasma gasification process, CO₂ capture and cascade power generation : new process development and technical feasibility analysis

Abstract

The proper disposal of large quantities of waste tires resulting from the rapid development of the transportation industry has placed a heavy burden on society. Thus, a valorization process of waste tires based on plasma gasification combined with heat to power and CO<inf>2</inf> capture to produce H<inf>2</inf> has been proposed to alleviate the environmental problems resulting from waste tires management. The energy and exergy analysis have been conducted in detail to assess the performance of the proposed system. Moreover, sensitivity analysis has been studied to identify the critical parameters. Among all components, the gasifier produced the most exergy destruction (27.26%), followed by CO<inf>2</inf> capture plant (23.91%) and H<inf>2</inf> separation plant (19.38%). Gasification temperature has a significant influence on the components of syngas. Furthermore, five kinds of working fluids for ORC have been studied to prove the reasonableness of R245fa as the working fluid. Under the basic working conditions, the total net electricity generation (NEG) and total exergy efficiency were 345.11 kW and 54.55%, respectively. The proposed valorization process based on plasma gasification in this paper has provided a more efficient way to achieve waste-to-energy compared to other kinds of gasification process.