Green recycling OTR tyre solution

Tytec Recycling (TR) has announced a soon-to-be launched solution that addresses the efficient disposal of worn off-the-road (OTR) tyres as used in mining and agriculture. Tyre recycling has always been a difficult and time-consuming task for standard tyres and near-impossible for OTR varieties.

The one-step process uses award-winning technology from Green Distillation Technologies Corporation (GDTC) and converts the OTR tyres into high-quality steel, diesel oil and carbon.

“We’ve been working on a way to efficiently recycle OTR tyres for the past nine years,” said Brett Fennell, chairman of TR.

The company is collaborating with GDTC to establish an environmentally friendly way to turn old earthmoving tyres into a renewable energy source. Currently, used OTR tyres are buried under mining dumps or stacked in EPA-approved areas around mine sites.

“There are plenty of ways to break down tyres but none of them are effective for OTR tyres,” said Fennell.

Most tyre recycling processes involve up to six steps including removal of the steel beading from tyres, cutting the tyres into small pieces and shredding or grinding the tyre cuttings. The final step is to perform magnetic sorting to remove any remaining steel for crumb rubber, which is commonly used in athletic surfaces, playgrounds and equestrian footings. In order to extract oil and carbon from old tyres, an additional process that uses pyrolysis reactors is required.

The current recycling process is time-consuming, energy intensive and expensive. Additionally, the larger the tyre, the more costly, difficult and maintenance intensive each step becomes.

“The destructive distillation process used by Tytec Recycling allows a whole OTR tyre to be recycled in a single step,” said Fennell.

“We’re using continuous heating technology that’s incredibly energy efficient and results in extremely low emissions.

“Our reactors operate at a much lower temperature and pressure, providing the added advantage of being safer for system operators and reducing the wear and tear on the plant,” he said.

The result from the distillation process is reclaimed steel, carbon and saleable quality diesel.

TR holds an exclusive global technology license for the destructive distillation process for OTR and agricultural tyres, allowing the company to provide what they claim is the most environmentally friendly OTR tyre recycling in the world. Generated emissions meet or exceed EEA, EPA and DER standards and approvals.

“We’re currently on track to begin OTR recycling in June 2016, will open our purpose-built recycling centre in Perth in January 2017 and then in Queensland soon after,” said Fennell.