Industry targets rCB in face of supply challenges

The carbon black industry has seen major challenges during the last year, facing supply line hurdles from the war in Ukraine and sustainability demands not seen before.

Tire manufacturers—who use a majority of the world's carbon black—are demanding greener ingredients for their 2050 net zero goals.

Virgin carbon black producers are using recovered carbon black oil to make more vCB, with a greener footprint—a strange relationship, it might seem, but not to rCB company entrepreneurs.

Key to clearing these hurdles is collaboration, as witnessed by partnerships between Bolder Industries and Liberty Tire; Michelin and Enviro Systems; and Molecular Rebar Design and Goodyear, among many others.

As the European Union eyes a complete ban on carbon black and synthetic rubber imports from Russia in July of next year, the continent continues to taper its dependence on the country for the critical materials.

In doing so, supply lines that were casualties of war-torn areas of Ukraine or cut off due to sanctions against Russia have no plans to reopen.

The most significant impact on supply chains occurred in 2022, and most downstream players have shifted to new sources and are secure again, Pedro Riveros, senior vice president and general manager for global rubber carbon black and the Americas for Houston-based Orion, told Rubber News in October.

When Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, the EU imported more than 50 percent of all its carbon black—about 550,000 tons—from its eastern neighbor.

That dependence sits at less than 40 percent today, just two months away from the two-year mark of Russia's invasion and eight months away from the EU Council's ban on Russian carbon black and synthetic rubber.

Orion has six CB manufacturing facilities across Europe.

Cabot Corp. also is well-positioned for the predicted surge in European CB demand, estimated at about 5-percent CAGR over the next several years. Boston-based Cabot has four carbon black plants in Europe.

Overall, Russia still pushes about 700,000 metric tons of carbon black into the global rubber market annually, according to research firm ChemAnalyst.com.

In southern Europe, some carbon black continues to be imported from Russia as new facilities go online. And China is cashing in, seeing CB demand skyrocket and selling much of the raw material to EU countries.

Before the EU's 10th package of sanctions hits on July 1, quotas are in place that allow Russian imports of 562,973 metric tons of synthetic rubber and 752,475 tons of carbon black.

Like few other companies in sustainable carbon black production, Bolder Industries Inc. is on a roll.

More specifically, the 12-year-old company is on a circular path, one that is helping its customers close their own sustainability loops.

With its carbon black and pyrolysis oils recovered from scrap tire feedstocks, Bolder's products are gaining momentum from companies in the tire manufacturing and petrochemical industries.

Bolder Industries' headquarters are in Colorado, but its BolderBlack and BolderOil are produced in Maryville, Mo.

A second reactor has been added to Bolder's production plant in Maryville, and the plant is producing about 6,000 metric tons of recovered carbon black and 8,000 metric tons of pyrolysis oil per year.

The company since has turned its attention to continued retrofits and expansion of its 66,000-sq.-ft. Terre Haute, Ind., facility, which Bolder purchased from Pyrolyx USA Indiana in December 2021.

Phase I of this project has three reactors to break down scrap tires, and the facility "is piped for a fourth."

Investments from Bolder for the western Indiana facility are estimated at $55 million.

With a mission to significantly reduce landfill material (mainly via the diversion of scrap tires); drastically cut emissions, water and energy usage; and create local jobs in an emerging industry, Bolder's goals are, well, bold.

The company splits its net sales evenly between BolderOil and BolderBlack.

Bolder's partnerships, specifically with Pittsburgh-based Liberty Tire Recycling L.L.C., which will supply Bolder's scrap tire feedstock for Terre Haute, remain at the core of its operations.

Just don't call Bolder a tire pyrolysis company—or a tire recycling company for that matter.

"We are demonstrating in real life and on a real commercial scale that our products work and our financial expectations are in line," Bolder CEO Tony Wibbeler told Rubber News in September.

Monolith is looking to stay ahead of the sustainability curve in the carbon black industry with its proprietary plasma/methane pyrolysis method, which creates carbon black and turquoise hydrogen (as well as "green" ammonia) out of natural gas.

The "next‐generation hydrogen and materials company," as it bills itself, converts conventional, renewable or responsibly sourced natural gas into these materials.

And it is just now looking to open Phase II of its Olive Creek campus, which sits just outside of Lincoln, Neb.

According to Akron testing, engineering and consulting firm Smithers, methane pyrolysis has produced CBs that can replace semi-reinforcing carbon blacks (in the N500, N600 and N700 areas).

Highly reinforced CBs—like N100, N200 and N300—might be feasible in the next five to 10 years from methane pyrolysis.

The method has "substantial potential" to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions using biomethane feedstock combined with green power.

However, Smithers in February of this year put the technology readiness level at a 7, meaning it is in the "demonstration and full-scale engineering" stages and not yet industrialized, which is expected in 2025-26.

With Monolith as the only production plant using methane pyrolysis, single-sourcing is a risk for customers.

Monolith has received conditional support for a $1 billion federal loan at its Nebraska plant, for which Monolith has lofty goals of becoming the largest carbon black producer in the U.S. at about 194,000 metric tons per year.

In addition, Monolith is partnering with Goodyear—a collaboration that dates back to 2021—on the development and use of its products in more sustainable tire manufacturing.

WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa.—Business leaders and industry experts are calling a new ASTM International standard test that helps classify recovered carbon black as "a step in the right direction."

Recovered carbon black—typically a result of tire pyrolysis—has gained momentum over the past several years, in both the number of rCB suppliers and in interest from major tire manufacturers, for its green credentials.

About 65 percent of tire makers cite rCB as the "best material to achieve sustainability goals," according to a recent Smithers report on sustainable CB production methods.

According to ASTM, the new standard for rCB, approved Jan. 31 of this year and officially known as D8474, spawned out of the D36 committee (the D24 committee conducts tests and classifications for standard furnace black).

Within the D36 committee is a subcommittee, D36.70, known as "rCB Testing in Rubber," which counts tire majors such as Continental A.G., Bridgestone Corp. and Michelin, and CB suppliers Birla Carbon, Cabot Corp. and Orion Engineered Carbons, as participants.

Essentially, the D8474 classification provides quality control via a test that can help differentiate rCBs.

According to ASTM, the test is a thermogravimetric technique that determines organic residue, overall fixed carbon content and ash content in rCB.

To date, rCBs have been refined from the non-virgin material that comes from a pile of tires into semi-reinforcing grades, including N700, N600 and N500 grades.

However, major work is ongoing within the D36 committee to properly grade rCBs, as they tend to be an amalgam of all the vCBs used in a particular tire.

Supply and production of recovered carbon blacks require partnerships to be successful.

Scrap tires are needed for feedstocks in tire pyrolysis, and often the companies in the pyrolysis space need a dance partner at both the upstream and downstream levels.

And in many cases, that dance partner is the same company—like a Michelin or Bridgestone that can provide the scrap tires and purchase the rCB back for tire production.

Other partnerships are blossoming by the month, it seems, including those that leverage interim processing steps.

Scandinavian Enviro Systems A.B., established in 1994 on pyrolysis technology, in March announced a partnership with Antin Infrastructure Partners for a joint venture to commercially scale its technology and output over the next seven years.

It's a vision that Michelin has thrown its full support behind.

The French tire maker—which also happens to be Enviro's largest shareholder—has committed to a multi-year supply agreement that includes delivery of recovered carbon black and tire pyrolysis oil.

Circtec, a pyrolysis and renewable fuels company, in 2021 began a partnership with Birla Carbon to produce rCB.

And just recently, Austin, Texas-based Molecular Rebar Design L.L.C. was awarded a $1.15 million grant from the Department of Energy to study the use of carbon nanotubes in tire manufacturing, with the prototype EV tires to be tested by Goodyear next year. The key here is that CNTs could replace CB entirely, or see the tech mixed with vCBs.

These partnerships and rCB methods have a ways to go.

As it stands today, less than 1 percent of all carbon black material used globally in new tire production comes from recycled, end-of-life tires, because there is not enough of it and it has not yet been graded properly.