ZC subsidiary invests in waste tyre treatment project

On 10 March, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province’s environmental protection department accepted the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) document of Zhongce Qingquan’s waste tyre treatment project. After completing this project, the subsidiary of ZC Rubber will be able to process 20,000 tons of waste tyres (crumb rubber) per year.

The construction period of the project is ten months. According to the documents disclosed by the environmental protection department, the waste tyre treatment project is located in the northeast corner of Zhongce Qingquan’s existing factory. Zhongce Qingquan believes that this is a technological transformation project. The investment is 49.4 million yuan (approximately £5.95 million; €6.72 million), and the new buildings involved include a pyrolysis workshop, granulation workshop, packaging workshop, carbon black post-processing area, and raw material warehouse.

After the completion of the project, Zhongce Qingquan will decompose waste tyre rubber particles into resources such as gas, pyrolysis oil and carbon black through four pyrolysis production lines. It is worth noting that the Zhongce Qingquan project does not involve waste tyre shredding. A company in Jiande City, Hangzhou City crushes and disassembles waste tyres and then sends them to Zhongce Qingquan as rubber crumb. And these tyre rubber particles are the raw materials of the Zhongce Qingquan waste tyre treatment project. The EIA document shows that “the project’s production is carried out in a closed system, and the pollutants generated in the production process are discharged after taking pollution prevention and treatment measures”.

Zhongce Qingquan said that the waste tyre treatment project could realise resource recycling. Specifically, “The pyrolysis oil can be used as raw materials for the existing carbon black production projects, reducing the consumption of raw material oil by 9676.8 tons. The post-treatment process processes the crude carbon black produced by pyrolysis to form carbon black finished products, which can be used for production in the factory area or sold to the market”.

Founded in 1992, Zhongce Qingquan is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZC Rubber Group. It moved to the current factory site in 2011. The company employs nearly 1,000 people, can produce 5 million sets of all-steel radial tyres and 90,000 tons of carbon black every year, and uses carbon black tail gas to generate electricity of 65 million degrees. Most carbon black products the company produces are for its use, and a small amount is sold. In 2021, Zhongce Qingquan’s net profit reached 140 million yuan.

In September 2022, Zhongce Qingquan obtained the environmental impact assessment approval for the production line project with an annual output of 2.5 million sets of all-steel radial tyres.