News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

The U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA) recently released the 14th Scrap Tire Management Report where it highlights that moving the world forward requires all stakeholders in tire recycling industry to act today with purpose and to share with key stakeholders one’s progress and commitment to sustainability, including tire safety, environmental stewardship and the communities one serves. While companies in the U.S. and worldwide are making important progress on scrap tire management, much remains to be done. Take a moment to read through important data on USTMA's new sustainability information hub that highlights the tire industry's progress and commitment to sustainability, including tire safety and environmental stewardship and the industry's economic impact.

Last year, Danish manufacturer of recycling equipment, ELDAN Recycling, launched the Twin Shaft Clean-Cut Shredder (TSCC) for production of clean-cut tyre chips from car or truck tyres, and market response has been positive. The Twin-Shaft Clean-Cut Shredder was developed to meet the demands of the cement industry asking for chip production without steel removal. The two frequency converters ensure a very flexible operation, i.e. individual setting of RPM, overload protection, auto reverse at overload and high torque from zero RPM. The frequency converter can achieve up to 50% power saving compared to normal electrical control.

Aliapur – French end-of-life tire management authority – is getting ready to launch its call for tender for the transportation of tires to tire processing units and tire recycling sites. This market for 300 regular routes concerns a volume of 400,000 tons of tires per year over two years. In addition to the call for tender for the renewal of the 4-year contracts for service providers in the end-of-life tire collection and transformation markets, on October 19 2020, Aliapur will launch another call for tender for the end-of-life tire transportation service. The service covers bulk transport of all the flows transported, first to transformation sites (for shredding or pre-processing), and then to tire recycling plants.

Novel asphalt additive for better, safer and environment-friendly roads has been developed by an EU-funded project Silent Rubber Pavements. The pavement industry faces different challenges in realizing more silent and eco-friendly pavements that need less maintenance. Crumb rubber, a granulated material obtained from scrap tires or other rubber goods, is a promising solution held back by several barriers.

The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) reports that the world production of natural rubber (NR) fell 8.7%, year-over-year, during Jan-Aug 2020 to 7.778 million tons. Accounting a 3.8% fall anticipated in the remaining four months of the year, the total production during the full year 2020 is anticipated at 12.901 million ton reflecting a 6.8% fall from the previous year. This revised outlook of the world supply in 2020 is 1.9 percentage points lower than the outlook reported a month ago which was 13.149 million ton by representing a 4.9% fall.

Robert Weibold is speaking at the World Recycling Convention organized by the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) on October 15, 2020. Mr. Weibold will take part in the session “Tyres & Rubber” which will be devoted to breakthrough technology projects to drive circular economy in ELT Recycling. Tyres & Rubber Committee eForum A dynamic BIR Tyres & Rubber Committee eForum earlier this year, in June, covered topics as diverse as COVID’s impact on world tire manufacturing and tire recycling markets, latest tire collection and processing data, benefits and barriers relating to pyrolysis, developments surrounding end-of-waste, and another emerging threat to producers of crumb rubber infill.

A Greater Manchester start-up company has launched the first of a range of products aimed at reducing waste from end-of-life vehicle tyres, supported by the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre’s (GEIC) ERDF Bridging the Gap programme at The University of Manchester. In conjunction with the GEIC, Dr Vivek Koncherry developed SpaceMat – a flooring product that uses graphene to improve dramatically the performance of recycled tyre rubber compared to previous efforts.

Smithers's annual event Carbon Black World – one of the world's leading forums for the carbon black value chain – which was formerly scheduled for November 10-12 in Charlotte, NC, United States, has been postponed to 2021 due to the second wave of the global pandemic of COVID-19. The date is yet unknown, but will be published by Smithers later this or early next year.

SIGNUS – the Spanish end-of-life tire management authority – reports that during 2019 it recycled 188,631 tons of end-of-life tires and converted them into new useful products for different applications. Of the total amount collected, about 12% were used to prepare for reuse (second-use or retreaded tires) and the remaining 88% were recycled in the different tire recycling plants in Spain into products that were destined for different applications. Among the main uses to which the material from end-of-life tires went in 2019, 39,011 tons of recycled tire rubber went for the construction of 390 soccer fields, 21,900 tons for the manufacture of 4,380 playgrounds and 2,940 tons that were used in paving 280 kilometers of roads.