Tyre Recycling in Australia

End of life car and truck tyres are a blight on the environment ever since they were invented over a century ago, because until now no means had been found to effectively and profitably recycle them.

Grinding up old tyres to make crumbs or flakes is not a means of recycling tyres as the rubber has not been changed and there is a limit to how much of this material can be used for kindergarten playgrounds and soccer fields and using it as a furnace fuel in Asia creates noxious greenhouse damaging emissions.

As well as the environmental problem caused by dumps of old tyres or illegally discarding them in bushland and waterways, after rain they become a breeding ground for mosquitoes and a source of such dangerous diseases as Dengue and Ross River Fever.

However, using a technique known as destructive distillation, Green Distillation Technologies is able to turn this wasted resource and an environmental hazard into high demand valuable raw materials.

The process is emission free and the recycled oil is used as the heat source for the production process.

The First Green Tyre Recycling Plant

The first Green Distillation Technologies commercial processing plant is located 5 kms north of Warren in Western New South Wales, which is North West of Dubbo on the Oxley Highway , the main trunk route between Brisbane and Melbourne.

The plant takes occupies approximately 2 hectares of the 21 hectare site leaving space for expansion and other projects, synergistic industries and tyre storage within the limits imposed by the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

GDT originally established a pilot plant in Warren in 2009 to prove the technology and has now moved to the current site where the first commercial facility is being built. At full capacity it will be capable of processing 19,000 tonnes per year, which represents approximately 3% of the end-of-life tyres that are generated in Australia each year.

The ELTs are transported to the site by rail or road.

Saving the Environment

Most people are aware that end of life car and truck tyres (ELTs) are a major environmental hazard, but few know the extent of the volume that is generated each year.

A rough rule of thumb is that one end of life tyre (ELT) is generated per head of population, which means that Australia produces over 23 million per year and the United States has more than 250 million.

These sometimes finish up in dumps, either legally or illegally. One such tyre dump in the US has many millions of tyres, while one in the Middle East is so vast that it can be seen from space. Another site in Stawell, Victoria contains an estimated 10 million old tyres. Local media have stated that if it catches fire, the local township will be uninhabitable for 35 years.

Old tyres do not combust spontaneously and have to be ignited to catch fire. Regulations are in place to minimise the problem and to assist fire-fighters but regrettably these are often ignored.

The GDT Tyre Recycling Process – How It Works

Destructive Distillation is the name GDT gives to their tyre recycling process which is developed from basic chemistry, the genius of Technical Director Denis Randall and his thirty five years of study and experimentation into organic waste streams. As a result GDT has developed the knowledge of getting the chemical reaction to occur.

The process begins by loading whole end of life tyres into a process chamber, which is evacuated of air and sealed. In the initial steps no further processing of the tyres, such as chopping or crumbing is required.

Heat is applied, which acts as a catalyst for the chemical reaction, which sees the tyre destructed into different compounds, one of which is collected and condensed into ‘manufactured’ oil. At the end of the process and the chemical reaction is over, the carbon and steel can be extracted cooled and separated.

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Further Information

For further information on our tyre recycling process and plants, please contact us directly.