Egypt: Young engineers produce diesel oil from used car tyres

A group of engineering students in Cairo have built a machine that produces alternative fuel from vehicle tyres.

The university students came across the idea when they were looking for a graduation project and learnt about the technology from a professor at their university.

“The project consists of the container in which we put the shredded tyres. We place a fire under the container which heats the tyres which will begin to evaporate. We put the vapour into a condenser which condenses the vapour, and the product is diesel oil. It is very similar in properties to pure diesel and the carbon or black coal is just left inside the container,” engineering student, Mostafa, Saeed Ali said.

It took the team three months to design the device and another seven months to build it.

Tyres are non-bio degradable and can be difficult to dispose of. Another student Mostafa Saeed says their project helps reduce waste.

“The two benefits gained from this process are environmental and industrial. The environmental benefit is that we are recycling used tyres instead of throwing them in the streets, instead of polluting the environment; we recycle them properly in an eco-friendly manner. This is the environmental benefit. The industrial benefit is that we extract essential products such as this oil which is very similar to diesel oil and use them in many factories such as cement and brick factories. You can use the oil we produce instead of pure diesel oil or gas oil,” Mostafa Ali added.

The students are currently producing alternative fuel on a small scale, but are searching for investors.

Environmental degradation getting increasingly worse in Egypt where rapid population growth and urbanisation has caused a series of environmental problems, issues notwithstanding. workplace safety