News and feature articles relating to recycling, including collection, of end of life tyres.
On 24 March, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed its 2022 Green Manufacturing List. Tyrepress China noted that the list of green factories includes five tyre manufacturers, namely Jinyu Tires, Triangle, Zodo Tire, Doublestar Dongfeng, and Sailun. Among them, Doublestar Dongfeng is the manufacturing base of Doublestar, located in Shiyan, Hubei.
Mercedes-Benz will soon use waste tyres removed from its vehicles in the production of new cars. German pyrolysis recycling specialist Pyrum Innovations has taken the “next step” in its cooperation with the vehicle manufacturer and anticipates recycling several hundred tonnes of used tyres from the Mercedes-Benz Used Parts Centre every year. Pyrolysis oil made from these tyres will be used in the manufacture of vehicle components.
Around 40-50% of end-of-life tyres removed from vehicles in Russia are currently recycled, reports public company Russian Environmental Operator. This means that around 500 thousand tonnes of old tyres are recycled, mainly into low-grade products such as large rubber crumb and rubber chips for floor surfacing.
After hinting at it for a few weeks, Friedrichshafen-based plant engineering firm Zeppelin Systems is revealing the purpose of a number of recent partnerships. Zeppellin Systems is “striving to shape a sustainable future for the tyre industry and make even better use of existing potential” via the “Zeppelin Sustainable Tire Alliance”. The latest addition to the alliance is Polish company ReOil, which came on board as a new partner on 13 March 2023.
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.
After lobbying regulators to do more to prevent rogue operators using T8 exemptions as a cover for the illegitimate handling of Britain’s end-of-life tyres, the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) has welcomed DEFRA’s February announcement suggesting the government department would act to end the current exemptions regime.
SK Incheon Petrochem, a petrochemical wing of South Korean conglomerate SK Group’s intermediate holding company SK Innovation, has made an equity investment into LD Carbon, uses pyrolysis to extract oil from end-of-life tyres. The news confirms earlier reports that LD Carbon was being backed a South Korean petrochemical firm.
In recent years, authorities in many regions of China have put waste tyre recycling on their agenda. Recycling waste tyres is a reusable resource that aligns with China’s current green and sustainable development policy and can bring profits to tyre companies. Tyrepress China notes that ZC Rubber, Linglong, Doublestar and other tyre manufacturers have begun to lay out their plans in this industry. For example, in December 2022, Linglong Anhui Manufacturing Base announced that it was preparing to launch a project to recycle 30,000 tons of waste tyres annually and its feasibility study provides numerous insights into the development of the wider Chinese tyre recycling business.
On 15 January 2018, The English Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Welsh Government published a consultation on “proposals to tackle crime and poor performance in the waste sector and introduce a new fixed penalty for the waste duty of care”. That 2018 consultation focussed on the standard of operator competence at permitted waste sites and introduced a fixed penalty notice for breaches of the household waste duty of care. Fast-forward to 13 February 2023 and Defra has made changes to “the ten waste exemptions of most concern”, which includes “mechanically treating end-of-life tyres” (ELT) known as T8 exemptions.
In 2020, Continental AG announced its goal of being carbon-neutral across the business by 2050. Also as of the 2020 fiscal year, Continental confirmed that it is procuring all of the electricity for its production sites around the world from renewable energy sources. Now, the German-based tyremaker is emphasising its goal of making tyres 100 per cent manufactured from sustainable materials by 2050.
LD Carbon is on the brink of closing a 10-year tyre pyrolysis oil contract with a South Korean oil firm. Tyres & Accessories understands that the 10-year deal will be worth around $25 million a year, making the whole contract worth around $250 million.
Genan has appointed Michael Christensen as its new application development manager. Christensen lives in Denmark and has more than 40 years of experience in tyre and rubber recycling. Effective 1 February 2023, Christensen will act as the link between sales, marketing and innovation in Genan.
Scandinavian Enviro Systems (Enviro) has received an order for tyre-derived pyrolysis oil, with an estimated value of 4.7 million Swedish krone ($450,000). Enviro hasn’t named the firm behind the order, but has said that it is “the subsidiary of a leading US oil company that submitted an initial order for oil in February of 2022 for production tests”.
On 30 December Linglong announced that it would adjust the construction of its seventh production base in China. The construction location of the project was changed from Lujiang, Anhui, to Lu’an, Anhui. At the same time, the tyre manufacturer’s Lu’an factory is preparing to build a project with an annual output of 14 million sets of high-performance radial tyres and a project to regenerate via retreading and material recovery 30,000 tons of waste tyres. In the original design, Linglong’s seventh factory in China was intended to have an annual production capacity of 14.6 million sets of radial tyres.
During the Smithers Recovered Carbon Black conference, which took place in Berlin in November, Bridgestone and Michelin jointly shared the results of efforts to develop a global standard to increase the utilisation of recovered carbon black in tyres. Click here to read or download Bridgestone and Michelin’s rCB grades and specifications proposal presentation.
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Zeppelin Systems
Zhongce Qingquan
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Lars Eriksen; Pixabay
Imthaz Ahamed; Unsplash
Continental
Genan
Enviro
Linglong