Solar-powered pyrolysis of scrap rubber from mining truck end-of-life tires – A case study for the mining industry in the Atacama Desert, Chile

It is urgent for the mining industry located in Chile to manage waste tiresin a better way than burying or landfilling them. There are several managing alternatives which allow recovering value from used tires, and it is possible to rank them in terms of their environmental impact performance. In this sense, solar energy is available and offers an environmental impact reduction. In this study, the global warming potentialof three different alternatives to treat mining trucks’ end-of-life (EOL) tires is calculated through Life Cycle Assessmentmethodology: mechanical pulverizationat ambient temperature, conventionally powered pyrolysisand solar-powered pyrolysis. The results show that the best alternative in terms of carbon dioxide-equivalent reduction potentialis mechanical pulverization, followed by solar-powered pyrolysis. However, the big outputs of diesel, petrol and gas from solar-powered pyrolysissuggest a substantial advantage for the mining industry, which highly relies on these products for...