Development of advanced Carbon-based compounds from recycled mining tires

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Transportation of goods and people is essential for the function of every society world-wide. With the**exception of marine and rail transport, every other mode of transport requires vehicles to have tires.**Consequently, it is estimated that nearly 5 million tonnes of waste automotive tires are produced in North**America and Europe alone. Recycling of automotive tires is now possible. Regrettably, recycling of**"off-the-road" (OTR) tires used on vehicles in the mining, forestry and heavy industries until now has not been feasible, due to their large size, as well as their sophisticated construction and tough rubber compounds.** Kal Tire Mining Tire Group (KT-MTG), a wholly-owned Canadian company, is currently the world leader in**the sale, servicing, repair and re-treading of mining tires. In 2014, KT-MTG pioneered the development of a**groundbreaking process capable of recycling automotive, aircraft as well as OTR tires of all shapes, sizes and**compositions. The outcome of the recycling process is diesel fuel, steel wire and carbon black (CB).**This NSERC-CRD grant application seeks funding to support a 3-year R&D collaboration on upgrading and**re-purposing of the carbon black originating from KT-MTG's recycling process. Researchers from the**University of British Columbia (UBC) and KT-MTG identified opportunities for high-value upgrading of the**raw CB into: 1) Carbon for battery anodes, 2) Nanostructured Carbon for aerogel thermal insulators, and 3)**Carbon for electrolysis anodes / electrodes. ** Successful upgrading of CB and utilization in any of the three high-value products has an immediate economic impact on the KT-MTG recycling operation. More importantly, however, developing innovative processes and markets for the recycled carbon black will have profound benefits for the environment (i.e., recycling of stockpiled or burned OTR tires at mines world-wide) and the Canadian job market (i.e., KT-MTG is planning to open 10 - 15 OTR tire recycling centres). Further, additional applications of the recycled carbon black are virtually limitless, due to the abundance of industries relying on access to high-purity Carbon.**