Turned waste tires into cleaner fuel, published at an IEEE conference
Billions of discarded tires pile up because they barely degrade and are hazardous to burn. Ishaan studied pyrolysis, which breaks tires down into fuel, gas and carbon, and designed a hybrid catalytic system pairing a bimetal-modified zeolite with catalysts made from industrial waste. He analyzed reaction kinetics, activation energies and product distributions, built predictive models to optimize yields of aromatic hydrocarbons and low-sulfur fuels, and assessed catalyst regeneration and techno-economic feasibility. The work was published at an IEEE conference.
A first-time researcher with an interest in chemistry and sustainability, and no plan for how to turn it into research.
First-author IEEE publication on catalytic pyrolysis of waste tires, and a state science fair finalist.
“I went from no plan to a week-by-week roadmap. We scoped a real study, drafted my first manuscript, and got published in IEEE.”