Recycling Old Vehicle Tyres... Tires!

Maybe the steel rusts away faster than the tyre erodes. Elephino.

It looks like some do remove the wire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMxgRGmmpsk

The wire didn't bother us as the tyres were either shredded or went in whole to fire cement kilns.

Yes that was another point too! In the UK they are using old tyres to fuel in part cement kilns.

Seems that old tyres can improve the thermal content of the fuel already used to reach the required temperature, but there are concerns regarding the emissions.

Some of the cr@p used to fire the kilns is highly toxic, the kilns actually make money as a waste disposal unit.

....and cut down on their fuel bills as burning tyres can reach the required temp to make cement!

Removing metalic fragments from recycled plastics/rubbers is second nature in those industries.

Most use an electromagnetic sensor to detect the metal in a falling stream of granules and divert them from the recovered material. Pieces large enough to cause injury are extremely easy to detect and remove.

We were concerned with particles 0.1mm in size in clear resin.

after its ground, they use magnets to extract the wire.

This has been in used for quite some time. back in the 70's they were using ground up tires to make cow mats for dairy cattle to lay on and easier for their hooves. They don't hold up as well as using virgin rubber as cow mats. But for some, the price was in their budget.

A new local school used it in their playground and my daughter and I spent a few hours there awhile back.

From what I could see they used tires that weren't made with steel belting but ones with the polyester and other non metallic cording materials which are actually still a pretty common tire design which a lot of agricultural and heavy industrial off road tires are still manufactured with.

Neat stuff and very nice to walk and play on too!

I remember a case I testified on where this fellow got in a gun battle with police at a local night spot out on the Interstate near the north edge of Lubbock. The bar was right next door to a truck tire re-treading facility, and there were these little rubber shreds all in the dirt everywhere. The ground was wet from a recent rain, and when suspect made his getaway, he spun out, and threw some of this mud up into his fender wells.

Police somehow managed to fail to track him until he was picked up on a BOLO. My testimony is that there were two places in Lubbock that had those little rubber shreds in the soil, and the soil at the other place did not match the soil color of the mud in his fender wells, the same color mud as at the bar.

The dimensional aspects of the tire shreds were a good match also, even as to average length.

We have our ways this modern day era to use magnetics to separate the rubber portion of the shreds from the metal portion, and it works every time, all of the time.

I use rubber mulch under the swing in the tree in my front yard. The stuff is great. I have it in a ring formed by plastic garden border flush to the ground. Because the rubber mulch is relatively heavy, I can run my mower right over it picking up the leaves, but the mulch doesn't scatter. It does not break down or absorb water. Every few years I dump it into a wheel barrow of water and 'wash' it. The plant matter floats to the top to be skimmed and I screen out the little bits of sand and other junk. It is the epitome of green. Re-using a product that can be re-used for many more years.

And there is no wire in it. Clever people figure how to get that out.

Where I am, steel radials are in the minority. Mostly fabric cords.

In Tanzania I noted some enterprising people cutting up tyres to use as the soles of sandals. It would be interesting to see if Michelin sandals gripped better than Goodyear.

The metal is extracted as the tires are being shred. There is a big tire shredding plant in Clarksville Ar and it is really amazing how it is done. Very safe for children and the environment. Also is used in many other areas as well. The city also uses this to patch deep pot holes in roads and for extended road surfaces (shoulders). Used in city streets where bricks are laid. Great for drainage when it rains.

Safe,... mink ranches use tire shredding equipment like this to process dead cattle,... whole. The manufacturer of this unit is about 12 miles from us.

Also seen this machine referred to as the Clinton 2000, used for shredding whole filing cabinets from the Rose Law Firm.

Why are cattle on a mink ranch to start with?

That seems to be the tip of an interesting account?

No conspiracy, but...

Dairy farms have a certain level of mortality rate. These dead cattle have to go somewhere, if you depose of them, you need to follow government regulations.

Instead, you call up the local mink ranch, they come pick it up, and give you a couple of bucks to boot, and their mink can eat for a week. or day, depends on the size of the mink ranch. And, I've only been told this....

In Green Bay, WI, we have a place called Sanimax, a growing company, Sanimax, makes chemicals out of dead animals, some as a complete body, some from waste from nearby slaughter houses.

This place is actually a very good place to work, pay is good. but the reason why, is when you drive past it... it smells of dead animals.

To serve as mink food.

If you think that's weird, ~1990 there was a mink farm near Roy, WA, USA, that somehow got hold of a whale carcass....

Whew... I hope they stuck it to let the gas out.

We've done our yard with the Rubberific brand shredded tire mulch. We were looking for something we wouldn't have to replace every couple of years and basically not respread before we manage to die of old age. It is shredded to look like shredded hemlock bark and has no steel in it. The steel gets separated out following the shredding. In fact, we don't see any of the belting material, be it steel or polyester. We are really happy with the stuff. It's been a phased installation, where we put in one area about three years ago to see how it behaved. last year we used it in the back yard and this year we finished out the front.

The shredded tires come in a couple of different forms, shredded bark or bark pebble. We went with shredded bark form.

Warranty on the material is 20 year for maintaining color. It doesn't float off in heavy rain and I find that I can blow oak and apple leaves off without lifting the mulch as well, even when the leaves are wet. The MSDS says it's non-toxic and non-carcinogenic and it strikes me as about as good a carbon sequestration as you are going to get.

Only down side is that when first spread and before it settles and interlocks, the dog tends to track bits of it around. Also, where the dog runs or paws, it tends to develop ruts or drifts that need to be raked out on an annual basis.

I "retreaded" a pair of slick-soled leather sandals by nailing tire treads on them. The Huaraches I had were made this way so I copied it. Unfortunately I didn't preserved the uppers and they fell apart. And maybe the rubber was too heavy. But they had great tread for a while.

So,...what your saying is, you ran your sandals till your wheels fell off.

A good deal of our bicycle flats come from these microscopic wires about a quarter inch long. We believe these come from steel belted tires getting shredded on the road.

Hound hunters feed carcasses to the dogs. Cows, horses, etc.

When I die send my body to the rendering plant. If it's good enough for my cows it's good enough for me.

Tire retreaders in Ark send the tires that they cannot use to Little Rock where some factories use the tires for heating in the winter. I am told that there are several places that do the same thing and THEY DON'T DESTROY THE AIR QUALITY!!!!!!!!!!! If fact you supposingly cannot not smell the rubber burning.

Back in the eighties I put in a pneumatic conveying system to move tyre crumb from the shredders to and from storage silos in a carpet underlay manufacturing plant. I was more concerned with programming a FIFO facility as crumb settles and locks together so it won't drop out of the silo if left in for more than a few hours. The metal wire strands had already been extracted by magnets before it came to the part of the system I worked on. The magnets mounted 2" above a belt conveyor had a cross conveyor sliding across their lower surface and dropping the metal into a skip at the side of the belt. The magnets and upper conveyor were vibrated so that loose crumb lifted with the metal would drop back onto the main conveyor. That system works well for ground fine crumb but would be no use on the large piece sizes used for play surfaces as too much rubber still attached to the metal strands would be removed with the metal wire. I just walked over to the school opposite my house and checked the tyre surface covering a part of their playground. It has woven fibre strands in it.

A magnet probably does not separate polyester fibers.