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, Viride Energy Africa 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.
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 1.. billion per year.
These sometimes finish up in dumps, either legally or illegally. 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 VEA Tyre Recycling Process- How it works
Destructive Distillation is the name VEA 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 VEW 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.
