Green Distillation Technologies (GDT), a renowned Australian tyre recycler, will soon be building their first plant on US soil, in addition to securing funding of up to US$100 million for other plants in the US, should the first one prove a success. The agreement follows “a considerable amount of work” in response to numerous US enquiries about GDT’s proprietary technology – the company developed world-first technology that recycles end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon and steel.
GDT’s COO Trevor Bayley, who was in the US to sign the agreement, said the nation generates at least 250 million waste tyres annually which contributes to a significant disposal problem;the number of old tyres is also increasing fast in India and China; and the world total is now in excess of one and a half billion a year.
Bayley explained that GDT’s approach provides a recycling solution with“valuable and salable materials” as end-products: the light crude oil is low in sulphur and easy to refine into petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and other petroleum-based products while the high-grade carbon produced has “massive potential” for sale in the form of carbon black, commonly used as chemical building blocks in many other products such as tyres, plastics, inks, and cosmetics. Even the steel reinforcing mesh and beading of the tyre can be reused in new tyres or simply recycled as scrap steel.
“As well as the US, our Australian developed world-first tyre recycling process has attracted strong international interest which has resulted in a recent Memorandum of Understanding for five processing plants in South Africa valued at more than US$34.5 million.
“We have also welcomed visitors to our Australian processing plant from almost every country on the planet including Japan, Thailand, Canada, the Middle East, Pakistan and India to name a few.”
Meanwhile, GDT is planning to scale up production at their local plant in Western New South Wales and another planned facility in South Queensland, within the next two years, at a projected cost of UD$20 million. GDT has further explored other potential plant locations to handle about 30% of the 25 million end-of-life tyres Australia generates each year – Bayley said that every round-the-clock plant will process a mix of 19,000 tonnes of tyres per year. With a permanent workforce of fifteen, the processing of a typical 10kg car tyre will yield 4 litres of oil, 4kg of carbon, 2kg of steel; a 70kg truck tyre will provide 27 litres of oil, 28kg of carbon, 15kg of steel; and 4-tonne oversize mining dump truck tyre will yield 1.6 tonnes of carbon, 0.8 tonne of steel and 1500 litres of oil.
“What we have done is a world breakthrough and we believe that in time our technology will eventually become the preferred means of recycling old tyres throughout the world,” Bayley concludes.