Green Distillation Technologies Chief Operating Officer Trevor Bayley will speak at the Waste & Recycle Conference in Perth on 8 September 2018.
This may be a chance for you to find out first hand about what our technology does and how we are rolling it out.
Turning old tyres into valuable raw materials
During the address Trevor will outline the environmental problem caused by end-of life tyres since pneumatic tyres were invented in 1888 by Scot, John Boyd Dunlop for his child’s tricycle and how the increasing popularity of the motor car in the early 1900s and the development of synthetic rubber in the 1920’s have created the massive environmental problem of today.
He will then switch your attention to the sheer size of the problem. It is a daunting task to try and dispose of the more than 1.5 billion end of-life tyres that are generated each year in the developed countries. This is roughly one per person.
This massive problem has meant that old tyres are thrown in the oceans, rivers and dumped in bushland so we can’t see them. In addition, there is one particular dump site of millions of old tyres in the Middle East. It is so large, it can be seen from the international space station orbiting at a height of over 400 kilometres above the earth.
How To Dispose of Old Tyres
Trevor will then discuss the various approaches that have been taken to disposing of old tyres in the past. This includes building artificial reefs, which were environmentally disastrous, chopping and burying in landfill, burning as furnace fuel or grinding up the old tyres for kindergarten playgrounds and soccer fields.
“A rubber crumb is a crumb of vulcanised rubber that will not biodegrade and will be a crumb of vulcanised rubber forever.”
As the Green Distillation Technologies has shown it is also a criminal waste of valuable raw materials. Because we can recycle old tyres into valuable oil, carbon and the steel beading.
GDT Tyre Recycling Technology
Trevor will also pay a tribute to Denis Randall, the man who invented the recycling process on which our business is based.
“He had developed a means of recycling organic waste streams and was exploring how to use burnt wheat stubble and cotton waste to make carbon, when we suggested we look at old tyres because of the abundance that is available and they are such an environmental problem.
“Denis is an unsung Australian genius and today he is our Technical Director. He has spent more than thirty-five years of study and experimentation into organic waste streams and his expertise is knowing how to get the chemical reaction to occur.
“Our technology has been acknowledged internationally. In 2015 we were awarded an Edison Award, the world’s top prize for innovation in competition with some of the largest companies in the world.”
We received the prize at a glittering ceremony in New York and are the first Australian company to win an Edison Award.
“Our process of tyre recycling begins by loading whole end of life tyres into a process chamber, which is evacuated of air and sealed. No further processing of the tyres, such as chopping or crumbing is required.
The process is within NSW Environmental Protection Authority guidelines since all the process vapours are captured and condensed while the exhaust stream is cooled and washed prior to evacuation leaving it well below environmental limits.
There is no waste. What goes in, comes out.
We even use a small percentage of the oil we make as the heat source for the process.
Tyre Recycling Plant Construction Updates
Trevor will then tell the audience about the first Australian Green Distillation Technologies processing plant. It is currently being used as a test facility and is located 5 kilometres north of Warren in Western New South Wales. Warren is North West of Dubbo on the Oxley Highway, strategically located on the main trunk road transport route between Brisbane and Melbourne.
He will then provide an update on the construction of the first commercial plant in Toowoomba, Queensland.
It is expected to open in April next year at the Wellcamp Business Park and process 19,300 tonnes, or a mix of 658,000 car and truck tyres per year, to yield approximately 8 million litres of oil, 7,700 tonnes of carbon and 2,000 tonnes of steel.
The facility represents an investment of $10 million to become fully operational and employ 15 to 18 permanent staff and local contractors during construction.
Trevor will also talk about the construction of the world’s first processing plant for oversize tyres in Perth, Western Australia.
Our vision is that we believe that our process will eventually become the world standard method of disposing of old tyres by recycling a valueless environmental problem into valuable reusable materials.
If you are considering attending, you can register for the conference here: http://wasteandrecycle.net.au/