Project description
Rolling out a circular concept for the tyre industry
The tyre industry generates considerable amounts of waste but it could enter the circular economy concept, adding to recycled products of high value from an environmental point of view. The EU-funded BlackCycle project will create, develop and improve a full value chain that will exploit recycling of the end-of-life tyre to produce high-technical second hand raw materials without any waste of resources. Since existing technologies are limited, the project will go beyond the barriers and produce raw materials apposite for tyre production or other technical products. In addition to the environmental benefits, the project will contribute to the growth of the European tyre industry as the world leader of sustainable tyre production.
Objective
The BlackCycle project has an upcycling ambition, targeting to create a circular economy of the end-of-life tyre (ELT) into technical applications like tyre industry by producing high technical second raw materials (SRMs) from ELTs. A key lever is to consider the circular economy of tyre domain: recycle ELT into new tyres. Known technologies in this domain are today limited and this new research project will have the ambition to pass their roadblocks, and deliver new technical raw materials relevant for tyre production or other technical products.
This project will proactively integrate these new materials (SRMs) and validate that the progress in all the key tyre performances having environmental impacts is not slowed down.
The BlackCycle project aims at creating, developing and optimising a full value chain, from ELT feedstock to SRMs, with no waste of resources in any part of the chain and a specific attention for the environmental impact. Eventually, close to 1 out of every 2 ELT will go through this new recovery process which will be the only virtuous cycle of this magnitude amongst all industrial sectors in the recovery of end of life products. In effectively implementing this change, the European tyre industry will be a world leader in a more sustainable tyre production.
Indeed, the main product obtained at the end of the project would be a new tyre where many raw materials come from ELT. In particular, the carbon black, a material representing ~20% of tyre composition, will be fully obtained from oils extracted from waste tyres through the pyrolysis process. Furthermore, several chemical and plasticizers will also be obtained from pyrolytic oil refining.
The final product would have a high added value from an environmental point of view, because more than 25% of the total weight would come from recycled ELT.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
63040 Clermont Ferrand
France