New tyres from old rubber

Engineers at Swansea University are investigating new ways of recycling tyres to dramatically reduce the amount of rubber wasted each year.

Every year, nearly 50 million tyres, weighing almost half a million tonnes, are disposed of in the UK alone. Since July 2006 it has been illegal to landfill old tyres, even after shredding, and so new methods of reusing or disposing of the rubber need to be found.  And it isn’t simply a matter of melting the rubber down to be reformed.

'Some materials, such as metals and thermoplastics, can be melted down and reformed into new components without significant loss in properties or integrity.Tyre rubber, however, is a 'thermosetting' material, which means that it does not melt but, if heated, the constituent chains degrade, lose their elastic properties and eventually burn and release energy. Indeed one particular use of waste tyres has been as fuel in cement kilns, but this is now seen as wasteful of a limited resource,' said Dr David Isaac, a Reader based in the Materials Research Centre, School of Engineering at the University.