Green Distillation Technologies building giant tyre recycling plant in Australia

Green Distillation Technologies is set to build a large off-the-road (OTR) tyre recycling plant in Western Australia in early 2018. The company and Tytec Recycling are collaborating on the processing plant in Perth, which will reclaim raw materials from tyres that are 25 to 63 inches in diameter.

The new plant will use a destructive distillation process to convert mostly mining tyres into oil, carbon and steel. According to the companies, a tyre weighing 3.5 tons will yield roughly 1,500 litres of oil, 1.5 tons of carbon and a large amount of steel that can be sent back to the manufacturer for reuse.

Australia typically disposes of end-of-life tyres in landfills. It is estimated that 155,000 tons of various size tyres are scrapped in Australia each year, of which 79.4 per cent are left on-site since there is no method for recycling them, the company says.

Transport of tyres from mine sites to the new recycling plant will be handled by Tytec Logistics, which has 75 per cent of the national OTR logistics market as well as providing storage for the extra-large tyres.

Tytec Recycling chairman, Brett Fennell, commented: “The environmental benefit of recycling very large and hard-to-handle tyres that have finished their useful life into high grade reusable commodities such as oil, carbon and steel, rather than just burying the problem for future generations to try and solve is enormous.”