The BlackCycle consortium launched the world’s first production of sustainable carbon blacks (sCB) for tyre applications on a conventional carbon black furnace reactor by using oils derived from an end-of-life tyre (ELT) pyrolysis process.
The usage of pyrolysis oil, supplied by Pyrum Innovations, Germany, as carbon black feedstock was successfully evaluated in the Innovation department of Orion Engineered Carbons. Orion concluded that replacing in a rubber compound a fossil fuel-based carbon black with a carbon black made from oil derived from the ELT pyrolysis will not change its properties.
The processing of the rubber compounds will remain unchanged, according to the analysis of the green compounds. As a result, sCBs are assumed to be a simple drop-in solution, requiring no changes to the formulations of the rubber compounds or process parameters such as mixing, moulding, or curing. Because the carbon black content of elastomeric materials is relatively high (around 30% on average), using pyrolysis oil as a feedstock for CB production is an important step toward a more sustainable rubber industry, according to BlackCycle, an R&D project funded by the European Commission under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme to implement the concept of circular economy to the ELTs at the European level