Description
The most commonly used rubber recycling technologies are dry ambient grinding, wet ambient grinding and cryogenic grinding. All start from shredded tires, which affects the purity of the recycled rubber. Ambient grinding cannot achieve small rubber particle sizes. Cryogenic grinding, a much more expensive technology can achieve small rubber sizes, because rubber becomes brittle at very low temperatures, but the process is expensive. It also suffers from the problem of impurities. Hungarojet has developed a rubber recycling technology based on a proprietary process of milling whole tires with ultra high pressure (UHP) water jets. It uses whole truck tires as input, with no need for preliminary shredding. The tread, sides and interior of the tires are treated separately, making it possible to separate the differing rubber compounds recovered. The remaining carcass can be sold as scrap metal. The rubber powder produced is arguably the best rubber recyclate available. It has very high surface to weight ratio, is perfectly metal and textile free, displays no surface oxidation or thermal degradation, has a high degree of homogenity, is outstanding in re-vulcanization, and is REACH compliant. This new technology is an outstanding innovation worldwide and it can revolutionize the whole recycling industry of waste tyres.
Summary of project results
Globally, over one billion tires reach the end of their useful life each year. The most commonly used rubber recycling technologies are dry ambient grinding, wet ambient grinding and cryogenic grinding. These technologies have several disadvantages (e.g. cannot achieve small rubber particle, expensive, etc.) Aquajet has developed a rubber recycling technology based on a proprietary process of milling whole tires with ultra-high pressure (UHP) water jets. It uses whole truck tires as input, with no need for preliminary shredding. The tread, sides and interior of the tires are treated separately, making it possible to separate the differing rubber compounds recovered. The remaining carcass can be sold as scrap metal. The rubber powder produced is arguably the best rubber recycled available. It has very high surface to weight ratio, is perfectly metal and textile free, displays no surface oxidation or thermal degradation, has a high degree of homogeneity, is outstanding in re-vulcanization, and is reach compliant. Aquajet has built a plant, using its technology, that is capable of safe and steady operation, and could produce up to 350 MT per year of high quality rubber powder.
It has just expanded its production capacity to 140 million lbs. per year, or over 60,000 MT/year. Because of the performed R&D activities the capacity and the efficiency of the technology has been improved. Due to the achieved development of tire processing technology the production can be performed on two different technology line (Jetmill 1-4, and Jetmill 1-2) which are suitable for different tire size. By launching a new production line and renewing the existing ones, the plant is now capable of producing up to 800 tons of waterjet-milled rubber powder. The higher productivity and the effectiveness in milling and water utilization the CO2 emission has been reduced. The produced rubber powder is a highquality row material for rubber manufacturing in this manner the waste load of the environment has been reduced.
Summary of bilateral results