Sustainability initiative BlackCycle claims pyrolysis optimization milestone

DILLINGEN, Germany—The tire recycling and sustainability initiative, BlackCycle project, has reached a new milestone with the successful optimization of a waste tire pyrolysis process.

In a June 8 news release, Pyrum Innovations A.G., which supplies the pyrolysis technology for end-of-life tires, said a trial campaign to optimize its process was completed on May 24 and 60,000 liters of "optimized pyrolysis oil" was delivered to Spanish project partner Sisener Ingenieros S.L.

The campaign involved "extensive laboratory-scale research" on various process conditions regarding the composition of ELT, the temperature profile and the residence time, said Pyrum.

The next step, the German recycler said, is the distillation of the oil, which is then processed by Orion Engineered Carbons into sustainable carbon black and used by Michelin in new tires.

Unveiled by project partners in November last year, the sCB is claimed to have identical characteristics to conventional carbon black of the same quality, with the significant difference that it is produced from a sustainable secondary raw material.

Launched in May 2020, the BlackCycle project will run until the end of August 2023 and is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

As part of the project, 13 companies from five European Union countries are researching a sustainable process to recycle recovered materials from end-of-life tires back into new tire production.

This includes the collection and selection of raw materials from ELT, as well as the optimization of pyrolysis, oil refining and recycling.