News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

The Tire and Rubber Association of Canada (TRAC) had recently announced that the nominations for its 2024 Industry Leadership Awards are now open. The nominations are open until April 26, 2024, in four categories: Leader of the Year, Young Leader, Lifetime Achievement, and Sustainability. Anyone can nominate a deserving individual or organization. Corporate nominees must have a physical presence, e.g., office or facility, in Canada. Nominated individuals can be domiciled anywhere. Self-nominations are only accepted for corporate nominees in the Sustainability category.

Robert Weibold – an internationally renowned expert in the field of tire recycling and tire pyrolysis – will speak at Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Circular Plastics Economy CCPE with presentation on "Status quo pyrolysis and current projects, trends in used tire recycling". The event will take place on April 25, 2024. If you would like to connect with Robert Weibold, discuss business opportunities or request information on consulting services, please send your inquiry at sales@weibold.com.

Utilizing recycled rubber crumb in the production of road surfaces and related products is contributing to South Africa's efforts toward a circular economy, where waste materials are repurposed for critical infrastructure needs. Dr. Mehran Zarrebini, CEO of Mathe Group, a radial truck tire recycler in Hammarsdale, notes that their factory processes about 1,000 radial truck tires per day, resulting in approximately 45 tons of rubber crumb.

With a wish to reduce tire abrasion and deepen knowledge in this field, Michelin has developed a system for analyzing small, emitted particles, "SAMPLE”. This captures, sorts, counts and characterizes particles close up to tires with unequalled precision and reproducibility. This analysis system, presented at Tire Technology, opens the way to tires with wear particles totally bio-assimilable by nature. There are questions being raised about tire and road wear particles. This is why it is essential to use reliable, reproducible and standardized measurements and will be a fundamental step in better understanding the environmental impact of these wear particles to innovate and devise new solutions.

On March 18, The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced that it will build a passenger car tire plant in Mexico to strengthen its capacity to supply tires to the North American market. The new plant will have an annual production capacity of 5 million tires, with planned capital investment totaling US$380 million (approx. ¥52.1 billion). Construction of the new plant will start in the second quarter of 2024, and production is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2027. The new plant will be built on a site with a total area of about 610,000 square meters, which will be able to accommodate future expansion.

The rubber compounding arm of the HEXPOL Group has announced an investment in a devulcanization line in Europe. This allows them to offer mechanical devulcanization of rubber in-house and supports the transition to a circular economy. For years, HEXPOL Compounding has worked on using cured compound scrap and waste, which are unavoidable side products of rubber part production. In the past, the converter paid for the disposal of their rubber waste, which often ended in landfills or was incinerated. In some cases, rubber waste was ground and reused, but until now, it was mainly used as a filler in low-quality applications. Devulcanization offers an opportunity to keep these valuable resources in circulation and reduce the demand for virgin materials and thus decrease the amount of unused scrap.

The Synthetic Turf Council (STC) – a non-profit trade association serving the synthetic turf industry – has recently shared the latest edition of the STC Guidelines for the Essential Elements of Synthetic Turf Systems, curated to provide reliable guidance on the essential elements for creating an unbiased specification for synthetic turf systems. According to STC, new advertising support helped the assocoation to offer the 2024 edition FREE to download. Feel free to spread the word and take advantage of this valuable resource.

Smithers Carbon Black World conference is back in Europe for its 19th year. The event will take place across the 14-15 May 2024 at the Imperial Riding School in Vienna, Austria. The Carbon Black World conference regularly attracts an international delegation of producers, end-users, and equipment solution providers from across the tire, rubber, plastics, compounds and ink industries to make new connections, share strategic insights, and explore future opportunities in the marketplace with key influencers and decision makers from all aspects of the value chain!

Rubberized asphalt is one of the most significant applications for recycled tyre rubber. In the United States this type of use dates back to the 1950s where today it represents a consolidated market. In Brazil the main highway is using asphalt binders modified by tyre rubber powder, and currently Cbb Asfaltos, a Brazilian company, who received a Green Patent for the process from the Brazilian Government, has the best technology in Latin America for this process.