China’s Henan Province now has a tire recycling facility with an annual processing capacity of 100,000 tons of tires – it can recycle scrap tires and not pollute the environment – this move helps the Asian country reinforce the sustainable trends in economy.

The new facility developed by Chinese tire-producer Doublestar Group and ten universities, with Southeast University leading the research, is located in Runan County and is aimed at fighting problems that come from environmental pollution as the Chinese tire recycling system, reportedly, has long been associated with pollution. In 2017, China generated 380 million of scrap tires and the in following years the amount has only been growing. To tackle this, China mostly turns to tire retreading of truck and bus tires. However, passenger car tires are, on average, used in small and illegal tire pyrolysis units – this is alarming as they result in grave contamination.

To attain a free-from-pollution plant at the 13-hectare territory used for construction, the developers had to consider tire pyrolysis aimed at carbon black regeneration – environment-friendly method largely associated with scrap tires. Reportedly, the facility can get 45,000 tons of tire pyrolysis oil and 35,000 tons of carbon black per year.

In total, over 300 million yuan (the equivalent of more than USD 49 million) were allocated to sponsor the first phase of the factory’s development.

Article by Tibetol.