New ideas are constantly being developed in order to get the old tire mountain under control. This is how biologists in Guatemala came up with the idea of designing mosquito traps from old tires. Background: Mosquitoes like to lay their eggs in old rubber. Elsewhere, old tires are generally shredded so that they take up less space in landfills.
A more promising and sustainable solution is that the company Green Distillation Technologies (GDT) from Melbourne, Australia, is working on: They have discovered that the combination of liquefied car tires and conventional diesel results in a surprisingly clean-burning fuel. Through a process called "destructive distillation," old tires are broken down into salable fuel, carbon, and steel. Four liters of oil, 10 kg of steel and four kilograms of carbon are produced from 1,5 kg of tires.
Tests by Queensland University of Technology showed that the recovered fuel, when combined with diesel, resulted in significantly reduced emissions while maintaining undiminished performance. Nitrogen oxides were reduced by 30%, and fine dust emissions were also reduced. If further refined, the fuel can also be used for aircraft and as a heating fuel. The development was awarded the Edison Award in bronze in 2016. Green Distillation Technologies plans to commission a plant with a capacity of eight million liters of oil per year as early as next year.
Source: Trends&Facts 1/2017
