Zero-Waste Tire Processor Targets Environmental Scourge

by Steve Clark (The Brownsville Herald) After a year in development, Tire Recycling & Processing, a facility unlike anything else in Texas and possibly the United States, has thrown the switch in Harlingen.
On Friday, several large, expensive, German-made tire-processing machines were thrumming loudly during a shakedown run at the plant, located in the Harlingen Industrial Park. Subcontractors from China, Japan and Louisiana were busy setting up the final component: Thermodynamic reactors that will turn the waste tire product into biofuel, which will then be sold to refineries in Dallas and Houston, according to TRP vice president Marta Martinez, a recycling industry veteran who started the company with two other investors.
... The reactors use “pyrolysis” to thermally decompose the tire pieces. One passenger car tire produces one gallon of biodiesel, eight pounds of carbon char and two pounds of steel and non-condensable gas. The pyrolysis system runs on its own gas, which helps minimize TRP’s emissions output, Martinez said, noting that the facility has all the proper environmental permits in place.
Outside the facility sit two horizontal 10,000 gallon tanks, painted a cheerful blue, that will store the biofuel. Martinez said biofuel will account for about 80 percent of the recycled products TRP generates.
... Martinez, who’s also president of Olmito-based EDS Recycling, said she was driven to start TRP for the same reason she got into recycling in the first place: To help clean up the planet. Illegally dumped tires are a scourge in the Rio Grande Valley’s rural and urban areas and across the border in Tamaulipas. By some estimates there are 3 billion junk tires along the U.S.-Mexico border from Texas to California. Texas alone produces 32 million waste tires a year, Martinez said.
“This is an invitation for every single city manager to clean up every single city in the Rio Grande Valley,” she said. “This coming Monday they’re going to receive a letter and a post card in the mail saying where we are and what we do, with a phone number and with our web page.” READ MORE