(354d) Use of Lifecycle Tools to Optimize Sustainable Energy Campuses

This paper describes the use of GaBi (TM) software to optimize the design of a Sustainable Energy Campus based upon feed of scrap automobile and truck tires.  Further, once the Sustainable Energy campus is defined, the software and related tools are used to compute the benefits of reduced lifecycle consumption of fossil fuels, emission of greenhouse gases and other wastes and the overall energy savings.

The Sustainable Energy Campus combines multiple technologies from different industries to create a truly sustainable “waste-to-profit” campus where the waste from one technology being used becomes the input feedstock to another technology that utilizes that waste to create a full spectrum of highly profitable fuel products. All the while, greenhouse gases are reduced, materials are recovered, energy is optimized and virtually no emissions are released to the environment.  Further, the reality is highly profitable immediately and for the long term.  Thus, genuine waste-to-profit.

 Technologies from the rubber, chemical and petroleum industries are at play in the Sustainable Energy Campus. A Carbon Black recovery production line takes scrap automobile and truck tires and uses a vacuum pyrolysis process to convert those tires into a product called Carbon Black Alternative and a stream of pyrolysis oil. Carbon Black is present in 75-85% of all new tires produced worldwide. A new cracking and reaction technology combined with a sophisticated separation process converts the pyrolysis oil into raw materials for gasoline, kerosene, diesel, naphtha, jet A fuel base and liquified low molecular weight hydrocarbons (propane, butane and pentane).  While each step can be profitable independently, combining them in a single site with cogeneration allows for energy and materials optimization as well as maximizing revenue. Further, minor components are captured and isolated which have extremely high value.  The key materials are cyclic terpenes and high been recovered at high yields and high purities.

Since a single scrap tire weighs approximately 21 pounds and one tire is produced per year per person in industrialized countries, the Sustainable Energy Campus provides a means of producing massive amounts of valuable products which otherwise would be produced from incremental fossil fuels and raw materials at significant cost to society and the environment.  A full scale tire pyrolysis unit utilizing this teechnology has been in operation for more than one year and has produced more than ten million pounds of carbon black along with the co-products cited above.  The data related to mass of products, energy savings and net environmental impact will be presented and discussed.