Company Taps into Scrap Tyres for Carbon Black

(Akron/Tire Review – Recycling Today) Delta-Energy LLC, Monroeville, Pennsylvania, has introduced two carbon black-based products recovered from tyre shred that can be used as alternatives to virgin carbon black in rubber and plastic compounds. The products were introduced in mid-October at the 2007 Rubber Expo, held in Cleveland, Ohio. Delta-Energy has been test marketing the product line for the past two years with good industry reception, according to the company. “We are extremely excited about the D-E Black product lines – Phoenix Black for rubber reinforcement and Zephyr Black for plastic and coatings pigmentation,” says Bill Cole, Delta-Energy’s vice president-product management. “Phoenix Black’s reinforcing properties are comparable to virgin carbon blacks.”

The commercial introduction of D-E Black marks “a significant milestone” not only for the company, but also the rubber industry in support of demand for manufactured goods with recycled content, according to Delta-Energy. “Rubber compounders can supplement the use of virgin carbon black with Phoenix Black at a lower cost while maintaining comparable product properties,” says Cole. “This reduces users’ carbon footprint and meets customer requests for recycled manufacturing material content. Phoenix Black’s value proposition fits well with the philosophy of green manufacturing programs recently announced by several rubber companies.”

The plastics industry will also be receptive to the new product intended for it, predicts Cole. “Zephyr Black finds a ready home in the plastics industry, which has even more experience in recycling materials,” he remarks. Delta-Energy offered a presentation on Phoenix Black at the 2007 Rubber Expo that was conducted jointly with Polymerics Inc., an Ohio-based rubber compounder. “We have seen char products from a number of laboratory scale tyre pyrolysis processes in the past. These products never reached the carbon black map,” says Joe Arhar, president of Polymerics. “Like many other rubber compounders, we thought these processes would not ever produce recovered black capable of matching virgin carbon black,” he continues. “Delta-Energy’s approach to us was different. They had independent test data from plant-manufactured recovered black [and] our screening test data of the material reflected Delta-Energy’s results.”

Adds Arhar, “We are convinced recovered black from scrap tyres is now a viable technology that has a future in the rubber industry. We are now taking the products of Delta-Energy’s technology to our custom mix customers to counter some of the raw material cost increases all of us in the rubber industry have seen over the past year.”