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In its recent semi-annual report, the China Rubber Industry Association (CRIA) announced updated guidelines for the development of rubber industry for the next five years. The guidelines, among others, set goals for rubber recycling and material recovery from end-of-life rubber and tires. Some of the goals related to end-of-life tire rubber and carbon black are described below: Carbon black Annual production by 2025: -6.08 million tons of carbon black -1.75 million tons white carbon black Other goals: -Energy consumption standards met by 80% companies; exhaust cogeneration employed at 90% companies

The renowned in the tyre recycling industry British magazine Tyre & Rubber Recycling runs a podcast exposing interesting topics and announcing updates to the tyre recycling and pyrolysis industries. Tyre Recycling Podcast interviews key players from the tyre recycling and pyrolysis industry from around the world. Make sure to subscribe for Tyre & Rubber Recycling magazine to receive updates about its interviews!

This September, Robert Weibold attended the First International Cooperation Summit on Tire and Rubber Recycling in Kunshan, China, on 16 and 17 September 2019. The event gathered industry participants from all over China, as well as from the European Union, the United States and other countries. Proclaimed by Zhu Jun, the president of China’s Tire Recycling Association (CTRA), the motto of the summit was “Environment first, Resources second; no mercy to polluting technologies”. As he and many other speakers asserted, China had gone a huge transformation in the tire recycling industry over the last 10 years.

The chemical recycling of end-of-life tires (ELT) via state-of-the-art pyrolysis technologies does not only avoid greenhouse gas emissions compared to today’s conventional production processes, but it also increases the resource efficiency while closing the loop in the transition to a circular economy. However, civil organisations criticise the production of fuel through chemical recycling, sometimes mutilate the terminology, pointing to the associated environmental impacts, while they overlook the fact that modern ELT pyrolysis concepts are not geared towards the production of "fuels" (which, by the way, should not be defined as "recycling" but rather as less preferred "recovery" according to the EU waste hierarchy).

Despite hard efforts of the tire recycling and pyrolysis industry to develop new markets and increase recycling rates, recycled rubber based product markets demonstrate only moderate growth. To tackle the problem and allow thousands of tons of precious materials go back to consumer goods, numerous end-of-life tire management organizations, companies and research labs do their best to find new markets and develop innovative products out of scrap tire rubber.

Versalis, a chemical company owned by Eni, and one of the world’s leaders in the production and marketing of elastomers has signed an agreement with AGR, a company that owns technology for the devulcanization of post-consumer elastomers. Together, Versalis and AGR are going to develop technological innovations and new products and applications from recycled end-of-life tire rubber. Devulcanization is process of selectively breaking chemical bonds that transforms objects in solid rubber, usually granulated, into a workable and moldable form, ready to be reused in the production of new products, such as tires or gaskets.

The second AZuR colloquium at the TH Köln Gummersbach campus brought together 18 scientists to discuss innovative methods and possibilities for recycling end-of-life tires (ELTs). Scientists from various universities and institutes presented current studies and research projects in areas such as microwave-assisted devulcanization of rubber, ecosystem development for a circular tire replacement business, and the activation of rubber waste for secondary raw material production.

The growing issue of tire waste has driven major advancements in recycling and sustainability practices. Ben Chouchouci of the Windsor Industrial Development Laboratory (WIDL) discusses how innovative methods, such as computer-based simulations and optimized product designs, are leading the way in turning scrap tires into valuable materials. Thanks to new regulations and recycling efforts, about 85% of tires in the U.S. are now recycled for energy or material recovery.

Zeppelin Systems, a plant engineering company based in Friedrichshafen and specializing in tire production and recycling, has formed a strategic partnership with Recykl Group, a Polish market leader in managing end-of-life tires. The partnership, aligned with the concept of an integrated circular economy, aims to improve the mechanical recycling of end-of-life tires and produce high-quality recyclates that can be directly integrated back into the production cycle for new tires. The partnership is expected to generate valuable synergetic effects in the development and marketing of technologies in the field of tire recycling.