Recycling Scrap Tires
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By Bollinger
Posted on : 11/3/2008
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A New Approch by Lehigh Technologies
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Starting to produce rubber powder a year ago from recycled scrap tires (great sources of rubber scrap), the company believes that this will be a great scope in the recycling Industry. This process involves freezing old scrap tires using liquid nitrogen. The frozen tires are then passed through a mill in high velocity. The frozen scrap tire will be brittle and hence turning the rubber into a fine powder. The company claims that the powder can be used in paints, shoes, plastics, carpets, and tires.
According to the recyclers at Lehigh, they can make rubber powder for half the price of synthetic rubber. "It's easily half or a third of the price of virgin synthetic rubber," said Neil Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures. "We see this as a global business down the road," he said, eyeing Europe and Asia. "But we would ultimately need factories there too."
6 million chopped up scrap tires a year is bought by the company. They get this scrap tires for 10 cents a pound. These scrap tires turn into 100 million pounds of powder per year. The new capital will be used to scale up production and add a second plant, a location for which hasn't been disclosed yet.
Recycling tires has many environmental too.
- Synthetic rubber is traditionally made out of oil, and that oil doesn't come cheaply at the moment.
- Yearly, more than 300 million tires are scrapped in the U.S. alone, according to KPCB. Those old tires are often buried in landfills, or burned.
- By using recycled rubber powder, which can be used to make up to 10 percent of a new tire, a gallon of oil can be saved for every tire produced
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About the author:
The author is a scrap Industry researcher who has wide knowledge in Rules and regulations of the scrap Industry. He has been in the Scrap Import and Export field for more than 10 years.
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