Tire Trash-to-Cash in the Aussie Outback
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … There are no tires in Nevertire because Green Distillation Technologies, some 20 clicks up the road in Warren, is operating its Destructive Distillation technology at pilot scale and is recycling used tires into oil, carbon and steel wire cord.
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Tires are a potent source of raw material. A typical 10 kilo passenger car tire yields 4 liters of oil, 4 kilos of carbon, 2 kilos of steel. And there are 70 kilo truck tires, monster aircraft tires (and an A380 has 22 of them, which get replaced every 300 landings), and though you didn’t ask, Australia’s mining operations utilize a 3.5 metric ton oversize mining dump truck tires.
In the case of the latter, Green Distillation Technologies CEO Craig Dunn reckons you can get 1500 liters of oil, 1.5 tonnes of carbon, as well as the steel reinforcing.
What do you do with the materials?
The steel? That’s returned to the supply chain.
The carbon? Carbon black is one of the world’s most widely used chemical building blocks.
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The oil? It’s a light low sulphur crude that can be refined into bio jet fuel, and Southern Oil is doing that, as we reported in June when Queensland’s premier inaugurated Southern Oil’s $18 million advanced biofuel pilot project in Gladstone. The facility will produce renewable diesel and power with an aim of supplying 1 million liters of fuel within three years for trials by the US Navy, Australian Defense Forces and potentially even for aviation and heavy road transport.
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The micro-cap company Green EnviroTech is also targeting scrap tires, with a proprietary technology that produces carbon black as a pioneer product, which it estimates has a global market that will reach $20.4B by 2022.
Green EnviroTech is working on three US projects: a carbon finishing plant in Ironton, Ohio, and two tire processing plants in Texas. CEO Chris Bowers forecasts that the carbon finishing plant, currently under construction, will be operating in Q2 of 2018. Also, they have been working with an established tire recycler to build a third tire processing plant, in Maryland, with a target of 100 tons per day. READ MORE
