Estonian parliamentary committee backs tyre pyrolysis.
Estonia to Approve Mixing Tyres with Shale Oil in Pyrolysis
The Estonian parliament’s environmental committee has made a proposal to amend the Industrial Emissions Act to allow the production of shale-derived fuel oil from tyre chips.
The chairman of the committee, Rainer Vakra, said the committee decided to support a proposal of the Ministry of the Environment to amend the Alcohol, Tobacco, Fuel and Electricity Excise Duty Act to define shale-derived fuel oil as fuel of whose mass-chipped tyres can make up as much as 30 percent.
“By amending the law, we will reduce the use of oil shale and will to a big extent solve also the problem of recycling of old tyres,” Vakra said.
Vakra said that in using tyre chips for the production of shale-derived fuel oil seven times less ash is produced and 3-4 times more oil produced than when using oil shale.
Kalle Palling, deputy chairman of the committee, said that there is no alternative at present when it comes to solving this longstanding problem.
The Estonian state-owned energy group Eesti Energia began tests of adding tyre chips in industrial amounts to oil shale at its older Enefit180 plant in 2016. Tests were carried out also at the newer Enefit280 plant by adding tyre chips to oil shale to the extent of 2 to 8 per cent, both cleared of metal before use.
“We made tests where we mixed tyre chips with oil shale. The process of pyrolysis with a chip content of 4 to 8 pe rcent works very well and the quality of oil will not change,” Veljo Aleksandrov, project manager at Eesti Energia, has earlier said.
If such a percentage of tyre chips was used, a single Enefit plant from Eesti Energia could consume approximately 100,000 tons or old tyres per year.
Eesti Energia previously tried to use old tyres for the production of oil in the 1990s, but that attempt was abandoned due to technological issues.
