Sustainable Waste Tire Derived Carbon Material as a Potential Anode for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

The rapidly growing automobile industry increases the accumulation of end-of-life tires each year throughout the world. Waste tires lead to increased environmental issues and lasting resource problems. Recycling hazardous wastes to produce value-added products is becoming essential for the sustainable progress of society. A patented sulfonation process followed by pyrolysis at 1100 °C in a nitrogen atmosphere was used to produce carbon material from these tires and utilized as an anode in lithium-ion batteries. The combustion of the volatiles released in waste tire pyrolysis produces lower fossil CO2 emissions per unit of energy (136.51 gCO2/kW·h) compared to other conventional fossil fuels such as coal or fuel–oil, usually used in power generation. The strategy used in this research may be applied to other rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, catalysts, and other electrochemical devices. The Raman vibrational spectra observed on these carbons show a graphitic carbon with significant disorder structure. Further, structural studies reveal a unique disordered carbon nanostructure with a higher interlayer distance of 4.5 Å compared to 3.43 Å in the commercial graphite. The carbon material derived from tires was used as an anode in lithium-ion batteries exhibited a reversible capacity of 360 mAh/g at C/3. However, the reversible capacity increased to 432 mAh/g at C/10 when this carbon particle was coated with a thin layer of carbon. A novel strategy of prelithiation applied for improving the first cycle efficiency to 94% is also presented.

Recycling Waste Tires into Ground Tire Rubber (GTR)/Rubber Compounds: A Review

“…Car tire Truck tire Off-the-road tire Rubbers/Elastomers (wt.%) 47 The rubber fraction of a tire, mostly in the treads (32.5 wt.%) and the sidewalls (22 wt.%), is a mixture of NR (polyisoprene) and synthetic rubbers such as polybutadiene (PB), styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and butyl rubber. The chemical structure of each component is presented in Figure 2 [28,30].…”

“…Tire pyrolysis oil (40-60 wt.%), gas (5-20 wt.%) and char (30-40 wt.%) are the main products of waste tire pyrolysis. The oil, gas and residues can be used for carbon nanotube (CNT) synthesis, as fuel in the pyrolysis process and the production of porous activated carbon, respectively [47]. The waste tires pyrolysis products and main applications are presented in Figure 3.…”

End-of-life tire management: a critical review

“…Machin et al ( 2017 ) analyzed the energetic valorization of ELTs in Brazil in contexts of job creation, environmental footprint reduction, and electricity generation. Gnanaraj et al ( 2018 ) promoted environmental sustainability through the use of ELTs in the battery industry. After 2018, several studies were published in the same scope.…”

The Positive Effect of ZnS in Waste Tire Carbon as Anode for Lithium-Ion Batteries

“…Figure 5 b shows the comparison of WTC-2 with other waste tire carbon recently reported. [ 24 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. It can be indicated that the specific capacities of literature [ 41 ] and [ 42 ] are 540 and 530 mAh·g −1 , respectively, at 100 mA·g −1 .…”