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VTTI, a global leader in energy storage and infrastructure, has entered into an agreement with Pyrum Innovations AG, an expert in the recycling of waste tyres via thermolysis, to develop a state-of-the-art waste tyres recycling thermolysis plant at VTTI’s Antwerp Terminal (ATPC). This agreement marks a significant step towards integrating sustainable waste management solutions into VTTI’s infrastructure and marks another important step in Pyrum’s international expansion plans.

Biesterfeld Performance Rubber, a division of the Biesterfeld Group, has been selected as distributor by global recycling company Genan for their micronized rubber powders as well as for the easy-to-use rubber modifier GENAN RUBBER+ PREMIXED. The distribution agreement covers the Mechanical Rubber Goods segment in the European rubber market with immediate effect. With this new, international partnership, Biesterfeld Performance Rubber is further expanding its rubber portfolio of innovative and sustainable products, while Genan is strengthening focus on developing new applications for their recycled rubber products.

The machinery of the Italian tire recycling equipment supplier Salvadori will be used to ensure operations of tire downsizing, and recycling of about 30,000 tons of earthmover tires per year. The Michelin Group selected Salvadori Srl as the supplier for the downsizing system. This new-generation tire recycling plant is to be built in Chile; currently it is under construction in collaboration with Enviro, a Swedish company that has developed a patented technology for recycling tires into recover carbon black, oil, steel and gas using pyrolysis method. The plant will be based in Chile’s Antofagasta region. Salvadori's tire recycling technology will be used specifically to reduce the tire into pieces of predetermined dimensions which will then be further processed in the factory.

An online magazine “The Better India” reports about an entrepreneur based in Pune, India, who turned her cash prize from ‘Startup India’ into a footwear brand Nemital that uses recycled end-of-life tire rubber. “I was in my last semester to complete post-graduation in renewable energy from The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) and started hunting for a job in the renewable energy sector,” Pooja Apte, the 28-year-old entrepreneur, recalls for The Better India. “During the process, I learned there are not many people working in the field of upcycling textile and plastic. I decided to work on tires and started experimenting,” she says.

With new European partners, Allianz Zukunft Reifen (AZuR) is gaining additional expertise in pioneering technological fields of the tire circular economy. Among AZuR’s new partners is now Weibold – tire recycling and pyrolysis consulting company from Austria. Beside this, AZuR-Network joined: The Bavarian CTS Bitumen is the technology leader in the rubber modification of bitumen for road construction.

The advantages of pyrolysis to tackle the world's growing disposal problem with end-of-life tires (ELT) in terms of a circular economy were described extensively in the last decade. Pyrolysis is a thermal process that converts organic rubber material into low molecular weight compounds such as pyrolysis gas, pyrolysis oil and raw recovered Carbon Black (ASTM 8178-20a). In contrast to the incineration of ELT, which is often condescendingly referred to as "thermal recycling" or „waste-to-energy“, pyrolysis does not destroy any raw materials, but breaks down the waste product into its chemical raw material components and makes them available for the circular economy. Fortunately, this is in the meantime confirmed by the great demand from the chemical industry for products from ELT pyrolysis.

The innovation forum "Scrap Tire Recycling" (AZuR) sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany recently published a large-scale study for its partners. The study is focused on the market positions and requirements of end-of-life tire recyclers and manufacturers of products from recycled tire rubber. Below, we are citing the original article published on the website of AZuR in May 2021. To read the original text in German, please proceed to AZuR’s website.

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.

Just in February 2023, the Joint Research Council (JRC) of the European Commission [1] published their study results on the environmental and economic factors of chemical recycling (pyrolysis) and energy recovery of end-of-life tires (ELT). The result of this study in advance: chemical recycling via ELT pyrolysis - including mechanical recycling for feedstock processing - is a more sustainable option for managing ELTs than energy recovery via incineration. Revisiting a decades-old knowledge Already in 2010, a much-cited Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) found pyrolysis to be the most eco-effective ELT treatment technology, followed by dynamic devulcanization and ambient grinding. [2] These results were confirmed in 2015 by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study showing that substituting primary resources with pyrolysis products from ELTs provides significant environmental savings. [3]