U.K. Firm Buys Canadian Microwave Plant

Environmental Waste International Inc. has made its first sale of its reverse polymerisation tyre processing plant. It has sold its first plant to an un-named firm in the United Kingdom for an operation to be located there.

The company has received a deposit of more than 1 million dollars against the purchase price of 10 million dollars.The plant should be commissioned within 18 months. Environmental Waste International’s system uses microwave energy to separate scrap tyres into carbon black, oil, steel and hydrocarbon gases.

The plant can process 3,000 tyres per day. It reduces each 9kg tyre to about 3.5kg of carbon black and 1kg of steel.

The plant can use the oil and hydrocarbon gases released to produce enough electricity to run the system. Excess electricity can be sold to the power grid.Reverse Polymerisation breaks down scrap tires into basic components.

This is achieved using the patented process that uses direct application of high-energy microwaves in a nitrogen environment. The oxygen-depleted environment prevents the formation of hazardous bi-products (e.g.

dioxins and furans) that can form from oxidation processes. Reverse Polymerisation is highly controllable as the microwave magnetrons have a variable output of up to 1.45 kW each.

Each magnetron is individually controllable to apply the appropriate amount of energy to the scrap tyre feed.The carbon black produced from Reverse Polymerisation can be used for new rubber production or other feedstocks. The steel is sold for recycling.

From a 9.1 kg scrap tyre, 3.4 kg of carbon black and 0.

91 kg of steel are recovered, yielding a minimum 47.5% recycling rate. The remainder of the tyre (oil and hydrocarbon gases) can be reused in the production of electricity.

Alternatively, if the hydrocarbons are used as other production feedstocks, the recycling rate is much higher and can reach 100%.The process is available in three models: The TR-6000 processes 6,000 tyres daily reclaiming approximately 20.5 tonnes of carbon black, 5.

5 tonnes of steel and up to 28.6 tonnes of hydrocarbons daily with a net power production capacity of 3.0 MW.