QUEENSLAND, Australia—Tire recycler Green Distillation Technologies is on track to build its second reprocessing plant, this one in Toowoombam, Queensland.
Construction work was supposed to start on the plant last year, but the company faced problems raising the finance to fund the project. However ,a round of success private equity fundraising brought in $30 million in February, so the company is on track to begin construction,
Meanwhile, GDT is bringing its existing facility in Warren, New South Wales, to full production.
To be built at the Wellcamp Business Park, near the Airport, the Toowoomba factory is expected to process 658,000 end of life tires per year into eight million liters of oil, 7,700 metric tons of carbon black and 2,000 ton of steel, GDT said in a news release.
The recycler expects to send the oil to the Southern Oil refinery at Gladstone, where the product is regarded as "light crude" with low sulfur contents, Chief Operating Officer Trevor Bayley said in a statement.
Green Distillation has developed emissions-free proprietary technology that is capable of recycling end-of-life car and truck tires into commodities such as carbon, oil and steel.
The company claims that the oil produced through its technology is comparable with "light crude, which is low in sulfur and easy to refine into petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum based products."
GDC also maintains that the carbon produced in the process is a high-grade product with potential for sale as carbon black.