From Used Tyres to Printer Ink

Printer ink can cost as much as vintage champagne, reports New Scientist. So finding a cheap way of making it must be a great money making opportunity. Now three inventors from Derbyshire think they have found a way of doing just that. The solution? Extract the carbon from unwanted tyres to generate a cheap and plentiful supply.

The black carbon powder used in regular ink is refined from pure oil and the liquid used in cartridges is boiled down from a volume six times larger. On the other hand, millions of tyres are disposed of each year

“Baking a tyre at 800 degrees Celsius should break it into a mucky mix of fused silica, steel wire, sulphur, and lumps of precious carbon char, the inventors say. Shaking the mixture through a magnetic sieve ought to get rid of lumps and metal, and then re-baking the smaller particles should produce semi-pure carbon powder,” New Scientist reporter, Barry Fox, explains.

“Flushing this through with hydrochloric acid will suck out any remaining metal and sulphur, and caustic alkali should remove any silicon bits, to produce usable carbon power,” he continued

In addition, the inventors claim the entire process will release far less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the traditional refinement process.