Tyre Recycling process and make carbon black powder
The number of vehicles hitting the roads is increasing everyday and so is the number of tyres. There is a business opportunity up for grabs and it’s in recycling them.
With more than 33 million vehicles added to the Indian roads in last three years, can you guess the other items that would have increased manifold leading to some grave problems?
Well, one of them is the tyre, one of man’s most useful inventions. Most useful, but if the increasing numbers are not managed it can be dangerous. About 80 million tyres are a part of these 33 million vehicles, which include two, three, four and six wheelers, and pose a potential threat to the environment. However, companies have innovated ways and means to curb this menace which has led to the evolution of the huge tyre recycling industry. When we had started working on this article, we thought we could count the recycled tyre uses on our fingers; which included cushioning on boats, burning for warmth in winter, swing ride seats (in rural Indian context) and at the most land-filling. However, further research and talking to industry people revealed startling facts about the uses of old tyres, which we had never imagined. In fact, in India, even the tyre recycling industry is not aware of all these uses. It’s a business opportunity glaring in front of us.
Tyre composition and stages in recycling
A tyre is made of natural rubber (also called virgin rubber), Styrene-Butadiene Rubber (SBR), Polybutadiene Rubber (PBR), Carbon black, Nylon tyre cord, rubber chemicals, steel tyre cord and Butyl rubber.
Stages in Recycling
- Crumb: Rubber Crumb is the material resulting from granulating scrap tyres into uniform rubber granules. It can be mixed with asphalt for road surfacing and making children’s playgrounds
- Reclaimed Rubber: Reclaimed Rubber is the recycled old tyre rubber. It can be used as a substitute of natural & synthetic rubber. It is mixed with virgin rubber to further make new tyres of automobiles, bicycles and other low-cost products like footwear and mats. Virgin rubber, 90 percent of which is produced in Kerala is sold for as high Rs 140-150 per kg. Reclaimed rubber is sold for Rs 25-30 per kg and India being one of the voluminous reclaim rubber producers, the production is growing by ten percent per year.
Now the Indian tyre industry (specifically) imported 39,000 tonnes of Carbon black and 54 percent of its Butyl Rubber requirements in 2008-09. If we could produce even a small amount of that import ourselves, we would be saving a huge amount for the exchequer.
Size of the business opportunity
Current tyre production stands at 11.75 lakh MT for the year 2008-09. With the projected growth of 50 percent, you can easily estimate the potential of the opportunity.
Various Uses of Old Tyres
Size of the business opportunity
Current tyre production stands at 11.75 lakh MT for the year 2008-09. With the projected growth of 50 percent, you can easily estimate the potential of the opportunity.
Various Uses of Old Tyres
Excluding the use of whole tyres, we can categorize the uses of tyres in the following way:
1. Rubber Crumb - floor mats, belts, gaskets, shoe soles, dock bumpers, seals, muffler hangers, shims, and washers
2. Reclaimed Rubber in Vehicles
a) Automotive Industry - Crumb (three to five percent) and Reclaimed rubber (up to ten percent) is particularly used in automobile tyres. However, since the volume of tyres is very high, the quantity of these rubbers used also goes up. New tyre industry uses approximately 58 percent of the natural rubber of India, including imports of more than 80000 tonnes (according to ATMA figures)
b) In tyre carcasses in substantial volume and other automotive parts
c) Bicycle tyre industry produces a massive 6-7 lakh tyres/day, out of which more than 80 percent are produced in Ludhiana. Ralson is the major company here with a production of one lakh bicycle tyres a day and 1.5 lakh tubes a day.
3. Molded products – These include mats, hose pipes, conveyor belts, v-belts, footwear, tiles, adhesives, sound dampers, rubber sheets, battery containers and other rubber molded goods
4. Footwear industry - Shoe soles
5. Cement Industry - "This is the most perverse use of old tyres causing only pollution", However, in some countries, respective cement industries have developed technology where the tyre is burnt at a temperature that destroys most toxic emissions, the exhaust is scrubbed and filtered and little escapes the cement kiln. The usage of tyres for burning in cement kilns in India is up to 20000 tonnes per year, according to Imbrose, a small tyre trader.
6. Retreading – Tyres in India are retreaded as much as three to six times. One thing to note here is that it’s the truck tyres that are retreaded, and not the car tyres. There are 100-odd firms engaged in tyre retreading in India with prominent names being MRF, Apollo, ELGI, Midas and Indag.
7. Whole tyres are used as highway crash barriers, furniture, boat bumpers on marine docks, etc but it is a negligible amount.
Land filling or burning tyres for energy has limited prospects as environmental authorities are acknowledging the need for its greener alternatives. On the other hand, mass-market end products like continuous rolls of cost-effective recycled rubber used for noise insulation now complete the 'big picture' for investors to consider recycling tyres commercially.
