CONSTRUCTION of the world’s first extra-large tyre recycling plant in Perth, Western Australia, will start soon. Following preparation of conceptual drawings and commissioning of final drawings, construction of the plant is expected to commence by February 2018.

The venture is a collaboration between Tytec Group and Green Distillation Technologies (GDT), a global award-winning tyre recycling technology company. They have jointly established Tytec Recycling to undertake economic green recycling of large tyres, referred to as OTR or off the road tyres, which are classified as those with rim sizes ranging from 25 to 63 inches.

The world’s first recycling plant for extra-large tyres will be built in Perth.

GDT has developed world-first technology that will recycle end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon and steel using their ‘destructive distillation’ process. Transport of tyres from mine sites to the recycling plant will be undertaken by Tytec Logistics, which has over 75% of the national OTR logistics market.

Currently there is no means of recycling OTR tyres and the usual method of disposal in Australia is to bury them in a dumping area on mine sites, or in an EPA nominated dumping area. The GPS coordinates of the dump together with the serial number of each tyre disposed of in this way must be provided to the EPA.

The recycling benefits by this method are considerable as by using the GDT technology a tyre weighing 3.5 tonnes will yield 1500 litres of oil, 1.5 tonnes of carbon, and the steel reinforcing which can go back to the tyre manufacturer for reuse.

The Hyder Report in 2013-14 estimated that there are 155,000 tonnes of OTR end-of-life tyres of various sizes generated in Australia each year of which 79.4% remain on site.

The recycling of OTR tyres in Australia is the ‘tip of iceberg’, according to GDT’s chief operating officer Trevor Bayley, who attended MINExpo, the world’s biggest mining expo in Las Vegas last year.

“The Australian recycling potential for OTR tyres is a fraction of the world market as during MINExpo we received enquiries from mining companies in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Canada, the US and Chile, and the market in these countries is immense as they have large mining industries and no current economic green means of recycling used OTR tyres.

“The move to build the world’s first processing plant for OTR tyres comes after more than 12 months of logistical research and development work at the Tytec Recycling R&D plant, which is a section of the GDT facility in Warren, New South Wales. This work has been seeking a solution to the problem of how to handle a 4-tonne tyre with a diameter of 4 metres or more through a complex process at sufficient volume to make it economically viable,” he said.

GDT has developed proven world-first technology that recycles end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon and steel using its ‘destructive distillation’ process.