The first tyre pyrolysis plant in the world, which is one of the flagship facilities of Klean Industries, has been awarded the prestigious Cradle to Cradle Certification by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry LLC (MBDC).
In recent years, there has been a change in product consumer’s knowledge and their need to understand a product’s supply chain, from raw materials acquisition to the production process and lifecycle analysis including what impact each has on the natural ecology of the planet.
Public health issues and a growing emphasis on environmental protection are now key decision factors when it comes to consumer’s choice of product, driving the demand for greener products and more environmentally friendly production methods.
This additional certification of Klean’s facility further reinforces that the products are sustainably manufactured and can be fully integrated with many traditional manufactures of rubber, plastic, ink, carbon and new tyres assuring that the products offer not only a significant cost advantage but also sustainability advantage second to none.
Beyond Klean’s extensive experience in pyrolysis technologies, what sets them apart from all tyre pyrolysis technologies is the ability to convert the tyre char into valuable end products with well-established end users in a multitude of product applications.
This is accomplished using proprietary technologies that produce a recovered carbon black (rCB) to a standard unseen by any other technology providers, hence their commercial success. As far as the company is aware, the Klean Team is currently the only group re-integrating recovered carbon black in new tyres with major tyre manufacturers around the globe, a truly advantageous sustainable application given the manufacturing of tyres consumes approximately 65% of the global carbon black production.
“To our knowledge, we are the only technology provider that comes with full performance guarantees and exclusive EPC relationships in place for deployment of any project, anywhere on the planet. Additionally, our certifications and product quality enable us to provide full product buy back guarantees as the demand for our recovered carbon ‘rCB’ and renewable fuel oil exceeds our current global production capacity, by many times over. In our analysis, we see recovered carbon ‘rCB’ market conservatively exceeding 100k tonnes by 2020 and that’s just in new tyre related applications,” stated Jesse Klinkhamer, CEO of Klean Industries.
The company’s certifications for technology and products include:
- ISO 9001, 14001, 14064, 14067
- CE and UL ECOLOGO certifications
- Carbon Footprint Certificates
- Green Product Certificate
- REACH Certification
- EPD Class II Enviro Labeling 0485 & 0486
- Cradle to Cradle Certified
“It’s taken decades for the industry to catch up to Klean Team who were truly the first movers and innovators in converting scrap tyres, waste plastics, and municipal solid waste into liquid fuels, nano carbons, and clean energy. The Klean Team and it partners first commercialisedtyre pyrolysis in the late 1970’s and have continued to develop a number of unique innovations,” Klinkhamer said, adding that they were initially turned down by MBDC back in 2008 when they first asked for an independent assessment of their manufacturing process.
A decade later, Klean Industries became the first to fully integrate not only recovered carbon black into new tyres but also became the first to design and now build the world’s first fully integrated tyre manufacturing facility that makes new tyres and re-manufactures (akin to retreading) used tyres and fully recycles spent tyre casing into new raw materials to be used again for the whole tyre and rubber manufacturing process, never mind generating heat, steam, and power from the recycling process itself to power the tyre manufacturing facilities.
This combined and integrated application is an industrial first, which delivers the highest possible returns both financially and environmentally. No other tyre factory design on the planet can produce, low carbon footprint tyres of this quality and cleanliness.
With extended producer responsibility (EPR) programmes being law in the EU, these programs are now gaining significant traction in North America and are being implemented in many jurisdictions. As an example, Sweden and Canada have already implemented EPR programmes across the country.
“A greener tyre industry is needed and what we are doing is going to define a new and more sustainable era in tyre manufacturing and pyrolysis recycling. It’s going to change the tyre industry forever and we are taking this same approach to the plastics industry with our plastic pyrolysis technology,” said Klinkhamer.