News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

The Estonian parliament’s environmental committee has made a proposal to amend the Industrial Emissions Act to allow the production of shale-derived fuel oil from tire chips. The committee said the amendment would enable to avoid old tires ending up at makeshift dumpsites in the future. The chairman of the committee, Rainer Vakra, said the committee decided to support a proposal of the Ministry of the Environment to amend the Alcohol, Tobacco, Fuel and Electricity Excise Duty Act to define shale-derived fuel oil as fuel of whose mass chipped tires can make up as much as 30 percent.

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.

An audit performed by Utah’s Office of the Legislative Auditor General reveals that Utah’s waste tire program needs improvement in waste tire fund utilization, tracking, outreach and oversight. The Utah waste tire program was founded by the Utah legislature in 1990 and is funded by a fee of $1 levied on consumers on every new tire purchased in the state.

Recently, Scandinavian Enviro Systems – the Swedish tire pyrolysis equipment manufacturer – published a press release which tells about the new lease agreement for tire pyrolysis plant site in Denmark, signed by a joint venture of Enviro and Windspace A/S – Elysium Nordic. According to Enviro, Elysium Nordic ApS is the official name of the prospective joint venture launched by Enviro and WindSpace A/S. Reportedly, it has signed a lease agreement with Associated Danish Ports (ADP) on February 5, 2019 for a site in Nyborg harbor on Funen, Denmark. The press release mentions that land lease is valid for 20 years with an extension option for additional 15 years; also, the agreement includes a 5-year option to extend the leased area to enable a phase two of the project that will double its capacity. The plant construction is scheduled to start in 2019, once different commercial questions are settled, and will be completed in 2021. The cost of the project is estimated at DKK 300 million, i.e. over EUR 40,2 million.

The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) reports that in 2018, world production of natural rubber (NR) accounted for 13.960 million tonnes, which means an increase of 4.6% in output compared to 13.350 million tons in the last year tons. Meanwhile, the world demand recorded an increase of 5.2% (in year-to-year terms) amounting to 14.017 million tons in 2018. According to ANRPC, this led to a deficit in demand of 57,000 tons of NR during the period.

Indian Hyderabad-based Imagix Pyrolysis plant incinerated tires to recycle them into fuel oil. This practice is threatening the city now and can pose even more danger than plastic waste; the tire incineration and illegal tire pyrolysis plants seriously pollute the air and emissions exceed the norms.

1,500 tires caught fire at 510 Kenmill Street near the Bartholomew County Fairgrounds Garden City, Columbus, US, on February 1. To put down a massive fire, three fire crews including 20 firefighters arrived at the site where they operated for over an hour. Columbus Township Fire Chief Dave Thompson commented on the incident noting that tankers with water were deployed to effectively eradicate the danger which allowed using in total 6,000 gallons of water. Moreover, tires were covered in foam. No one was injured as a result of the incident.

A Spanish waste tire management company Signus has released a report outlining the successful implementation of rubberized asphalt mixtures in Spain; the report considers almost all projects carried out in the country with the material since 1996 up to the first quarter of 2017. The report is of great value as currently there are over 1,600 kilometres of road works using crumb rubber from end-of-life tyres (ELT) in Spain.

Today, Chile recycles just a small part of all solid waste, including scrap tires, estimated at only 10 percent of waste produced, due to absence of special policies designed specifically to target different kinds of solid waste. To design a policy and succeed in recycling practices, the National Association of the Recycling Industry ANIR ordered the consulting company Sustrend S.P.A. to work on Municipal Solid Waste program by analyzing successful projects around the globe encouraged by Extended Producer Responsibility Systems (EPR).