Growth in the world market for carbon has been behind a recent spate of world visitors to the see for themselves the world-first Australian process developed by Green Distillation Technologies that recycles end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon and the steel rim and beading of the tyre.
The visitors to the prototype plant at Warren in Western New South Wales have come from Pakistan, Chile and Taiwan, while past visitors have included Thailand, New Zealand, Japan, United Kingdom, Middle East and Africa to name but a few.
It is interesting that many of these visitors come from established tyre recyclers, some of which use the pyrolysis process and are keen to see a system that also uses heat and pressure to ‘melt’ the tyres, but does it without emissions and produces oil and carbon of much higher quality.
Although much has been written about the quality of the oil from the process that is classed as a light crude and is easy to refine, the quality of the carbon has not been highlighted nor has the diversity of uses for this chemical building block and the increasing world demand.
Global Carbon Market Growth
The global carbon black market is expected to surpass $25 billion by 2020.
It is growing at a compound annual growth rate of over 4%, which is driven by rising demand from tyre industry, as well as the construction and manufacturing sectors which use carbon black to provide strength to industrial rubber compounds and other equipment.
Carbon black is a deep black coloured powder with reinforcing, tinting and conductive properties which are utilised across various sectors with the tyre industry as the biggest customer of where it is used to improve strength and durability.
Demand for carbon black in paints and coatings and inks is expected to show an increase over the next five years, as well as for plastic and printing inks.
