Largescale UK tyre pyrolysis plant feasible – Enviro

In November 2020 Scandinavian Enviro’s UK partner 2G BioPOWER began a study into the feasibility of running a largescale tyre pyrolysis plant in the UK. The project has now been completed and found that there are “favourable conditions” for such a pyrolysis plant that “derive primarily from the large domestic demand for recovered oil for the production of renewable vehicle fuel.”

2G BioPOWER conducted the feasibility study with an “international oil company with operations in the UK” as well as the engineering company OSL. The purpose was to investigate “the commercial and technical conditions for establishing a profitable, large-scale recycling plant based on Enviro’s technology.”

One of the conclusions of the feasibility study is that, while local demand for recovered carbon black is more difficult to assess, the interest in recovered pyrolysis oil is already so large today that it will be possible to sell all the oil that can be produced. The reasons for this include the incentives launched by the UK government in 2018 to produce so-called development fuel, a new category of renewable vehicle fuel. After 2G BioPOWER received the Ministry of Transport’s approval in 2019 to convert Enviro’s pyrolysis oil into development fuel, the company has received large interest in pyrolysis oil from a major UK oil refinery.

The profitability calculations conducted in the feasibility study build on a plant comprising 20 of Enviro’s reactors and that half of the supply of end-of-life tyres will be secured through imports, although UK exports of end-of-life tyres are described as “considerable”. The reason for the latter is said to be “insufficient local infrastructure currently available for the recycling of end-of-life tyres”. The feasibility study also found sales of recovered carbon black would also significantly improve the profitability of a local plant.

“There are few tyre manufacturers in the UK, so the local demand for carbon black is small. However, it is easy to export recovered carbon black and since the global demand is strong, we see no problem whatsoever in also selling the carbon black. In conclusion, this means that we also foresee favourable fundamental conditions for establishing plants based on our recycling technology in the UK,” says Thomas Sörensson, CEO of Enviro.

A life cycle analysis conducted by the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute shows that tyre production using carbon black that has been recycled using Enviro’s method could lead to 79-84 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions, compared with production using virgin carbon black.