News: Weibold Academy

Today, many developing countries suffer from poor waste management practices and severe environmental problems. This includes not only insufficient wastewater treatment, dangerous chemicals in soil or solid household waste, but also end-of-life tires (ELTs) which, accumulated at landfills, pose threat to human health. Whereas fraught politics is incapable of designing scrap tire management regulations and establishing collection systems, there are other practices which could help. To affect scrap tire management and recycling on local level, one should come up with solutions tailored to people’s economic behavior and habits, and look at their economic needs. This is where crowdsourcing for ELTs comes into play.

When we talk about products derived from tire recycling, we often imply crumb rubber or fine rubber powder. The former is the most common material, while the latter – one of the most expensive products of tire recycling. Yet there is another alternative, cheaper in value, but having promising market opportunities – tire-derived rubber mulch. Rubber mulch from scrap tires is produced in the initial stages of recycling process when input material is shredded several times and separated from steel wires. This yields a thin product of homogenous size, approximately 50 mm long which can be vastly used in landscaping. Below, we describe several ways of how tire-derived rubber mulch can be used.

Today, scrap tires find numerous uses in many industrial applications and consumer goods. Even though the number of applications grows, there is still a huge surplus of scrap tires available for recycling and many tire stockpiles around the world will remain intact yet for decades. Researchers claim, however, that a huge number of scrap tires can be successfully reused in concrete; interestingly, not only rubber can be used to improve properties of concrete, but the bulk of other materials contained in tires, i.e. recycled steel and synthetic fibers. This article briefly summarizes findings of such researches.

In tire recycling, one can create different types of output depending on production technology. From each output type, several applications can be produced, hence different industries and markets can be targeted. Currently, there is a wide range of products that can be developed via tire recycling. However, to significantly increase profits, R&D activities prove to be an integral part of tire recycling. Success of products on the market largely depends on the regions where they are sold.

Oil makes up approximately 35-45% of pyrolysis output depending on process conditions. Recovered fuel oil consists of three fractions with the middle fraction prevailing and it cannot be considered a substitute for traditional fuels before purification and sometimes additional treatment. Width of application of tire-derived pyrolysis oil depends on regulations in particular countries where a project is carried out. In countries with strict environmental protection regulations pyrolysis oil may require additional treatment and refinement, which in turn will increase production costs and lower profit margins.

This post is a summary of numerous researches and articles published by European and American research institutions. Dozens of independent researches carried out in Europe and U.S. throughout the past decade inferred that tire-derived rubber infill in the artificial turf poses no threat to human health. Researchers assert unanimously that exposure of athletes’ skin to crumb rubber infill on stadiums and playgrounds yields no elevated risk of cancer. As the issue has been assuming additional importance, it achieved the level of the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) which, together with the European Committee of Standardization, carried out comprehensive researches about crumb rubber exposure on human health.