STUDIES ON PYROLYSIS OF SPENT ENGINE OIL IN A QUARTZ LOAD CELL

Aparna Sarkar, Michael Langanki, Ranjana Chowdhury

Abstract: Every year gallons of waste automobile lubricating oil are generated in India. With the rapid growth of automobile industries, volume of waste lubricating oil is increasing at a high rate. The regeneration of these waste oils depends on its PCBs and PCTs value. If the value is lower than 50 ppm then legally the waste oil can be used otherwise it must be incinerated. In very recent years, pyrolysis method has been practiced to remove the pollutants from waste oil. Pyrolysis method has also been applied due to the production of either char or oil or gases at a time and these pyrolysis products may be maximized by the adjustment of process conditions. Under the present investigation, spent engine oil is pyrolysed in a 30 mm diameter and 195 mm long quartz load cell placed in a tubular furnace from 573K to 873K in a nitrogen atmosphere. The calorific value of this oil sample is 46 MJ/kg, determined in a bomb calorimeter. The spent engine oil sample is also pyrolysed in a Thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under the same experimental conditions. The TGA analysis has been performed at constant heating rate, 10 OC/min. A kinetic scheme has been proposed where two parallel reactions occur simultaneously to produce volatiles and char. The kinetic rate constants of both the reactions have been determined in the temperature range under study. Reaction kinetics of formation of pyro-oil and gaseous product from feed material has also been determined in present range of reaction temperature. The activation energies and pre-exponential factors of all products (volatile, char, pyro-oil and gas) have been determined. The calorific values of pyrooil obtained from pyrolysis of spent engine oil at temperature of 673K, 773K and 873K have been determined to be values 56 MJ/kg, 62 MKJ/kg and 58 MJ/kg respectively.

Keywords: Pyrolysis, Spent engine oil, Load cell, and pyro-products

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0306041