UK’s largest tyre recycling company Murfitts Industries and French tyre maker Michelin have announced a project to process old tyres, recovering the energy and materials within them. The £14m pyrolysis project, which if approved, could be fully operational at Michelin’s truck tyre retreading site in Stoke-on-Trent by next year.
The “cutting-edge” process developed by Murfitts will reportedly generate energy which will be used to power Michelin’s production on site, thereby lowering CO2 emissions from the factory by 1,500 tonnes/year. In addition to the energy recovered, the process will also produce recovered carbon black (rCB) and tyre pyrolysis oil (TPO).
Michelin said up to 12,500 tonnes of old tyres/year could go through the process, and steam generated from it would also be used by the factory to cure new tyres.
Christina Peloquin, site director at Michelin UK, described it as a “really exciting project” which would cut the firm’s environmental impact, while also lowering energy costs to help it stay competitive.
The founder of Suffolk-based Murfitts Industries, Mark Murfitt, said he believed the new plant could be a “breakthrough in the life cycle of a tyre”.
That is because it “moves tyre recycling on from recovering energy and material for other uses to being able to feed it directly back into factories for new tyre production,” he stated.
The pyrolysis plant is proposed to go on a former heat and power generation site at Michelin’s Campbell Road factory.
If the planning application is approved, it could create up to 18 full-time jobs, said Murfitts Industries.