Retreading Business and Tyre and Rubber Recycling present at The Tire, Cologne
The Tire, Cologne returned after a Covid imposed absence with a series of panels on tyre recycling. David Wilson from Retreading Business discussed the role of retreading in sustainability and its role in helping extend the life of tyres, keeping them out of the waste stream for as long as is possible.
The second speaker was Dario Andreani from Chile, who brought with him his presentation on his T-phite graphite developed from recovered Carbon Black from waste tyres.
At a prototype stage at the moment, Andreani is looking at building the first pilot-scale plant to create Lithium-Ion batteries using T-phite. If successful, it will lead to full-scale manufacturing, creating more efficient batteries for the future.
As was highlighted in Ewan Scott, editor of Tyre and Rubber Recycling in his presentation, despite the best efforts of the tyre industry to use 50% of recycled/ renewable material in their tyres by 2050, there will always be 50% of the tyres produced still needing to be recycled. The battery market could be a huge new market, and perhaps a more easily developed market than, say, rubberised asphalt.
Panel two was led by Ewan Scott, who took a different look at sustainability, questioning the difference in interpretation of sustainability between the public and the industry. The thinking was that whilst the public thought that sustainability was about recycling, reuse, and minimising resource use; the tyre and rubber industry had a different point of view. Ultimately, he urged tyre recyclers to look wider than the tyre industry for markets, as half of all tyres produced would always need to be recycled outside the tyre sector.
The following two speakers were Pascal Klein from Pyrum Innovations AG, and Jon Visiasouk from Tyromer Inc.
Klein gave a comprehensive presentation on how the Pyrum plant functioned and how it can be commercially viable. Klien also discussed the next steps for the growth of Pyrum, taking them close to 50,000 tone per annum, including the possibility of hydrogen production.
Visiasouk presented on the background of Tyromer and the advantages of using devulcanised materials. The presentation addressed the process and why devulcanised rubber was such a positive solution.
He also discussed how and why there was a need for Tyromer’s process and how it fitted into the tyre sustainability drive.
