Guide to carbon black from tyres


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Enhancing qualities crucial to tyre manufacture and performance is made possible in large part by carbon black. Our whole collection of premium Test method carbon blacks for tyre manufacturers offers greater tensile strength and reinforcement for longer product life.

The best balance of attributes is achieved by choosing the appropriate carbon black for every tyre component. Count on us to collaborate with you to find your application’s ideal product. The harmony of wear resistance, rolling resistance, and traction in tyre tread compounds is essential. Our collection of revolutionary improved performance carbon black tires is intended to preserve traction while enhancing treadwear and rolling resistance. This is crucial to fulfilling the constantly evolving industry criteria for tyre labelling and fuel efficiency.

Carbon blacks have been developed to minimize non-tread component hysteresis and enhance inner liner permeability, contributing to longer tyre life and better fuel efficiency.

To further increase treadwear and lower heat accumulation in the treads and non-tread components, our technical services teams are concentrating on creating new classes of carbon black. Along with increasing fuel efficiency and tyre life, these enhancements may lower CO2 emissions. A cleaner environment and more ecologically friendly goods are the ultimate results.

Recently, discarded tyres were mainly utilized for energy resource recovery. Since mineral ash makes up about 20% of the carbon black in these tyres, only modest amounts of the carbon black are recovered. Most of this ash may be separated using a novel method, allowing for reusing the minerals and carbon black found within.

There are around three kilos of carbon black in a typical automobile tyre, which is often referred to as industrial soot. Here’s the issue: To manufacture one tonne of carbon black requires roughly 1.5 tonnes of fossil fuels, large amounts of water, and up to three tonnes of carbon dioxide. Recycling the carbon black contained in old tyres would thus make perfect sense. Approximately 1.8 billion end-of-life tyres are added to the pile yearly, making this an enormous raw material supply. About four billion end-of-life tyres have already accumulated at landfill sites. From these tyres, we have mostly recovered oils, which, like engineered rubber, are then employed as a source of energy for manufacturing applications or as raw resources in refineries. The mineral ash, made up of preservatives, silicate chemicals and zinc elements to make tyres, makes up to 20% of the carbon black retrieved after the pyrolysis process, although it is mainly unusable.

Using carbon black in tyres

Since the dawn of human civilization, carbon black has been used as a black pigment for paintings and inks. The need for powerful black pigment has gradually risen since the introduction of print in the fourteenth century. Traditional carbon black (lamp black) was initially used for these colouring purposes. In the first lamp black production techniques, wood was burned smolderingly with little airflow. The smoke then entered a cone-shaped soot chamber, in which the carbon black was deposited on the walls composed of metal, linens, or wool. The burned wood was used to make charcoal.

Carbon black has additional critical functions in tyres, in addition to stabilizing the chemical elements of rubber. These comprise:

Preventing UV radiation damage to tyres

Rubber tyres constructed lacking carbon black are susceptible to hardening and may degrade due to the sun’s intense UV rays, reducing tyre performance. This is similar to putting elastic bands or an erase out in the sun. In contrast, carbon black prevents tyre hardening.

Lengthen the life of tyres

Several automotive components heat it while we drive, particularly at the treads and belt regions. The tyres may overheat and sustain damage if the energy is held in place and not released. Fortunately, it has been shown that carbon black may assist regulate tyre temperature, increasing tyre life.

Recycling carbon black from used tyres

The environmental issues brought on by old tyres are now so evident that they have gained widespread attention. In this case study, the characteristics of carbon black from tyres produced by continuous, commercial-scale pyrolysis of scrap tyres are examined. By examining the differences between product attributes under mass production conditions and those under lab scale or pilot scale production conditions, this study intends to add to this expanding field of research. The construction and introduction of a pyrolysis prototype with a waste tyre rate of mass flow of 50–60 t d1 took place. Granulates of steel-containing tyres were pyrolyzed in a micro-negative tension furnace at 420 and 20 °C. This kind of non-stripping, micro-negative pressure, and low-temperature thermal heat pyrolysis technology may lessen the need for equipment sealing, minimize the amount of rubber and steel wire that has to be stripped and increase the efficiency at which resources are used. Tire pyrolysis oil (TPO), pyrolysis gas, and pyrolytic carbon black all show favourable qualities. It has proven effective in reusing pyrolysis gas in pyrolysis burners and dryers.

TPO had a more excellent heating value estimated to be between 37 and 40 MJ/kg and was equivalent to diesel fuel after additional processing. Proximate composition, element analysis, XRD, and surface structure results all supported the fact that there was no discernible difference in the data between CBP produced on a commercial scale and examples from other small-scale studies. The predicted morphological modifications of black carbon particles showed an actual potential structure of CBP aggregation in large-scale commercial pyrolysis. This study aims to advance the field’s current research into commercial manufacturing. This research sheds new light on the practicality of continuous industrial pyrolysis and proves that the process is workable. It also serves as a valuable resource for several researchers and organizations looking into the viability of industrial production of waste tyre pyrolysis technology.

As a result, carbon black is essential for tyre strength and longevity since tyres are the most critical component of a car and significantly impact all performance variables. Keep in mind that smoother, safer driving results from sturdy tyres.


Komal Singh

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