Wood stove and coal furnace heating

[oil pan 4]

I burned a tire in it.
Don't burn tires.

[jjackstone]

I used to work at a place that burned tires to power their onsite co-gen plant. Worked really well for them. They got the tires basically for free from dumps around the state. They had a big chopper to cut them into little pieces before they burned them. It saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in utility bills a year.
JJ

[freebeard]

I detect a difference of opinion. It puts me in mind of dense thermal depolymerization, which I guess is now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_liquefaction.

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a thermal depolymerization process used to convert wet biomass into crude-like oil -sometimes referred to as bio-oil or biocrude- under moderate temperature and high pressure.[1] The crude-like oil (or bio-oil) has high energy density with a lower heating value of 33.8-36.9 MJ/kg and 5-20 wt% oxygen and renewable chemicals.[2][3]

The reaction usually involves homogeneous and/or heterogeneous catalysts to improve the quality of products and yields.[1] Carbon and hydrogen of an organic material, such as biomass, peat or low-ranked coals (lignite) are thermo-chemically converted into hydrophobic compounds with low viscosity and high solubility. Depending on the processing conditions, the fuel can be used as produced for heavy engines, including marine and rail or upgraded to transportation fuels,[4] such as diesel, gasoline or jet-fuels.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I detect a difference of opinion. It puts me in mind of dense thermal depolymerization, which I guess is now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_liquefaction.

All that sounds about right.
Some forced air might do the trick.
It was one hell of a fire.

[freebeard]

Wouldn't forced air be pyrolysis?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hydrothermal+liquifation+vs+pyrolysis

[Fat Charlie]

There's a lot of energy in tires. The desert can get cold at night, so our patrols would bring scrap pallets and humvee tires to the nearby IP checkpoint. One tire would burn well for at least 3 hours. Kept those guys warm much better than a pallet.

[oil pan 4]

It thermodepolymerizes straight to combustion.
I found a typical pallet is only about 1 cubic foot of wood, a pallet can weigh about 40lb, each lb of wood is about 10,000btu.
A tire is probably some where around 20,000btu per pound, tires are heavy, a typical small car tire can weigh about 23lb. Truck tires can easily hit 40-50lb.

[freebeard]

Here's a story about depolymerization

Eco India: Could a fuel generated from plastic waste replace fossil fuels and meet energy needs?

The hand labor in collecting, sorting, cleaning and shredding 50lb of plastic wrappers is prolly unsustainable outside India.

[oil pan 4]

I think this is going to be a cold winter.
I saved some tires over the summer.

[oil pan 4]

The main problem with car tires is they won't fit in the coal furnace. With out modification.

Problem solved.