News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

Cabot Corp. – one of the global players on the virgin carbon black market – will increase prices on all carbon black products sold by its Reinforcement Materials segment in North America. Effective July 1, the 6 cents per pound price rise will address "the increasing costs to provide reliability and supply assurance to customers," Cabot said in a May 24 statement. In addition, Cabot said it is investing $200 million in nitrogen oxide (NOX) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) reduction projects to meet requirements set by the Environmental Protection Agency's emissions control initiative.

Tyre Stewardship Australia – an end-of-life-tire management authority in Australia – reports that it partnered with Puma Bitumen for crumb rubber ‘game changer’ for Australian roads sector. The equivalent of more than a million used car iyres can now be recycled to make high quality crumb rubber bitumen for Australian roads in a ‘game changing’ partnership between Puma Bitumen and Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA). Through two significant equipment investments – partly funded by TSA – Puma Bitumen has dramatically expanded its manufacturing capacity and widened the range of crumb rubber technology for both sprayed seals and asphalt currently available in Australia.

In a recent press release by Birla Carbon – one of the leaders and innovators in the carbon black industry worldwide – the company announced a partnership for sustainability with Circtec – an end-of-life tire pyrolysis operator focused on production of renewable fuels and recovered carbon black. According to the press release: Circtec will become the largest producer of Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials Birla Carbon to deliver Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials to customers through its extensive product development capabilities Partnership to create the single largest source of Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials for the tire, mechanical rubber goods, and plastic industries

Now that Australia’s first crumb rubber bitumen blending plant opened, more end-of-life tires will be used to manufacture useful value-added products, like durable rubberized asphalt, rubberized bitumen blends, rubber coatings, etc. Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) reports that world-leading equipment specifically designed for blending crumbed rubber and bitumen has been installed and commissioned for the first time in Australia by construction giant Fulton Hogan in partnership with Tyre Stewardship Australia.

Black Bear Carbon (“BBC”), the Dutch technology provider for recycling end-of-life tire rubber into recovered Carbon Black (rCB) and renewable petrochemicals, has announced that is had successfully completed a first closing of €7.5M , this is the first step in a fundraising campaign of €78M for its new BBC flagship plant at Chemelot Industrial Park, the Netherlands. The investment round was led by Capricorn Partners from the Capricorn Sustainable Chemistry Fund, with support from Invest-NL, joined by current investors; Brightlands Venture Partners, Siam Cement Chemicals and others.

CEMalta will be working on a number of projects and initiatives, including the beverage container refund scheme, end-of-life tires, construction waste, food waste, and textile waste. the country’s agency previously known as the Resource Recovery and Recycling Agency is being renamed to Circular Economy Malta (CEMalta) to promote the continual use of resources.

In spring 2021, recycled rubber flooring goods by North West Rubber (British Columbia, Canada) were rated as "Acceptable for an Operating Room Area" according to a third-party independent cleaning study. According to the results of the third-party testing which highlights the effectiveness of the SportFloor® Stamina line of recycled rubber performance flooring in helping to protect sports complex athletes, visitors, and staff from the risks of microbial contamination. North West Rubber (NWR) commissioned Westech Systems FM Inc. to conduct and report on a third-party independent cleaning audit with the goal of assessing how easy it was to clean and disinfect NWR SportFloor® recycled rubber flooring.

This May, Salvadori – on of the leading technology providers in the field of tire recycling – revealed about its new partnership with Rubberosion and the State of Colorado in the United States, which helps tackle the end-of-life tire recycling problem in Colorado. Below, we are citing Salvadori’s press release. Rubberosion Inc. is referred to as one of the leading providers of value-added end use rubber products for stormwater and erosion control in the United States. Its business began with a vision: find a solution to Colorado’s end-of-life tire problem, which was large tire dumps, one which irrupted in a major tire fire, turning what was considered as an environmental problem into an environmental solution. Over the years, its distribution network grew together with the market demand for their products. To meet the increased production volumes, they started looking for solutions that could help them improve their manufacturing process.

The European Rubber Journal reports that Cabot Corp. – a renowned global producer of carbon black – has seen a significant rise in its second quarter results. The magazine says Cabot “expects the robust and broad-based demand to continue in the second half of the year.” ERJ hightlights that for Cabot, “this has been the second consecutive quarter of record earnings (EBIT) within its Reinforcement Materials segment, which includes the production of rubber carbon black materials.” According to Cabot’s announcement from May 3, 2021, the segment’s earnings rose by 45%, i.e. to $81 million within the first quarter of 2021.