Re-use of steel cord from tyres as reinforcement in sustainable construction

全世界每年用超过1000万吨橡胶和高质量钢丝帘线增强材料制造约15亿条新轮胎。目前约有5%的这种原材料在生产过程中被浪费，并通过焚烧或填埋处理。最近开发了一种新工艺，将未硫化橡胶与钢丝帘线分离，使两种成分都能回收和再利用。该项目的重点是开发从这一过程中回收的钢帘线的新的高价值应用，将其用作工业楼板和隧道衬砌等重载混凝土结构的纤维增强材料。为了实现这一目标，首先需要研究改进回收过程，自动将帘线切割成预定长度，并将其整合到新混凝土中，特别设计用于通过湿浇注，泵送或喷涂进行浇筑。使废钢帘线作为混凝土中的钢筋获得第二次生命，仅需要制造新钢纤维钢筋所需的约4%的能源，从而为提高建筑行业的可持续性做出了重大贡献。

Approximately 1.5 billion new tyres are manufactured around the world every year from over 10 million tonnes of rubber and high quality steel cord reinforcement . About 5% of this raw material is currently wasted during manufacture and is disposed of by incineration or in landfill. A new process has recently been developed to separate the un-vulcanised rubber from the steel cord enabling both components to be recovered and re-used . This project focuses on developing new high value applications for the steel cord recovered from this process by using it as fibre reinforcement in heavily loaded concrete structures such as industrial floor slabs and tunnel linings. For this to be achieved, research is first required in to refining the recovery process, automatically cutting the cord in to predefined lengths and integrating it in to fresh concrete especialy designed for placement by either wet casting, pumping or spraying. Giving waste steel cord a second life as reinforcement in concrete only requires about 4% of the energy needed to manufacture new steel fibre reinforcement thereby making a significant contribution to improving the sustainability of the construction industry.