Commercial scale production of low carbon renewables and circular economy products from end-of-life tyres.
Solving a waste problem
Every year, around 1.5 billion tyres worldwide come to the end of their useful lives. End-of-life tyres can’t be recycled and do not biodegrade and are normally burnt, which calls for new ways to recycle and reuse the valuable materials the tyres hold.
Green Tyre Technology (GTT) will use end-of-life tyres as a feedstock, turning tyres into renewable fuels and products. Creating value from waste helps to reduce a problematic waste stream and contribute to the circular economy with new fuel products and recycled material.
Renewable fuels from waste tyres
As tyres are made up of biogenic material the GTT project will use existing technologies to process end-of-life tyres and produce advanced biofuels that can help meet the rapidly increasing demand for sustainable transportation fuel.
The technology for the plant includes pyrolysis and hydro processing, both established technologies:
Pyrolysis is the heating of a material in an oxygen free atmosphere so there is no combustion. The material thermally decomposes into gases and solids.
Later in the process, the gases are cooled causing oils to condense giving tyre derived oil (TDO) for further refining. The solids produced are largely made of pure carbon and can be processed into a recovered material suitable for many different uses including the production of new tyres.
Hydroprocessing removes sulphur and other contaminants from the oils and changes the molecular structure before their separation into the product streams. The TDO is separated and filtered to remove solids, before being fed into the hydrotreating process.
In the hydrotreating process, the TDO is heated and mixed with hydrogen for hydrodesulphurisation, before the products are washed and cooled. The gases fraction is recycled and used in the process, and the liquids are split into the three products: development fuel diesel, naphtha (a component in gasoline or petchem feedstock) and very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO).
Recovered Carbon Black rCB
Carbon Black is used in tyre production to improve strength and durability, GTT will create consistent quality recovered carbon black at scale that can be used to displace carbon black made from fossil fuels in tyre manufacturing, thereby reducing emissions from carbon black and creating a circular economy.
Location
The GTT project will be part of Greenergy new facility on Teesside, England, located adjacent to Greenergy’s biodiesel plant and strategic infrastructure for fuel distribution.
