L
aboratory tests have already been
conducted on the oil created from
Green Distillation Technologies
tyre recycling process. h at process
breaks old tyres into oil, carbon and steel.
h e “on-truck” tests have been conducted
on a Kenworth K200 semi-trailer that
travelled the 1200km from Brisbane to the
Rio Tinto Hail Creek mine, south of Mackay,
Queensland.
h e truck was fuelled with a mixture of
10% recycled tyre oil and standard diesel
for the outward leg and 100% diesel for the
return journey.
Results from that trial should be available
next week.
h at trial will be followed by one using a
Hyundai 2017 iLoad, which has a 2.5 litre
diesel engine, which is similar to many other
diesel vehicles on the market.
h at van will transport the team from
the Queensland University of Technology
and Deakin University that is conducting
the research to and from mine, following a
similar methodology to the Kenworth test.
h e purpose of this research is to
compensate for what has become known
as the “Volkswagen factor” as the previous
research was done on a laboratory bench.
h at bench testing by QUT found the
recycled tyre oil, when mixed with standard
diesel, had exhaust emissions with 30%
less nitrogen dioxide but almost the same
performance.
GDT’s tyre recycling process is known as
“destructive distillation”.
It recycles end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon
and the steel bead and mesh, leaving nothing
wasted and even uses some of the recovered
oil as the heat source.
h e company is building a plant in Perth,
Western Australia, to recycle mining-sized
tyres.
GDT chief operating oi cer Trevor Bayley
said the company had already worked out the
logistics ei ciently and economically recycling
oversize tyres that weighed four tonnes.
“h e benei ts of recycling oversized tyres
are considerable as a tyre that weighs 4t will
yield 1500 litres of oil, 1.5t of carbon as well
as the steel reinforcing, which can go back to
the tyre manufacturer for reuse,” he said.“h e last Hyder report in 2013-14 estimated
that there are 155,000t of of the road end-
of-life tyres of various sizes generated in
Australia each year of which 79.4% are let
on site as currently there is no economic and
green method of recycling them.
“In addition there are 1.5 billion tonnes of
tyres discarded tyres a year by 2020 and the
US more than 200 million.”
h e road test research is being conducted
by the Biofuel Engine Research Facility at
QUT under the supervision of Professor
Richard Brown in association with
Melbourne’s Deakin University’s Dr Tim
Bodisco.
Brown said the on-road truck test would
be able to coni rm the basic laboratory tests.
“We have been asked why we are adding
10% of recycled tyre oil to the diesel and not
using 100% tyre oil as the fuel we are testing,”
he said.
“h e answer is that diesel engines in
Australia are designed to run on diesel
fuel that is rei ned to a particular standard,
while the tyre oil is an unrei ned crude oil,”
he said.Tyre oil testing
Research is being conducted properties of oil from recycled tyres to evaluate its performance
and emissions when used in commercial vehicles under real world operating conditions.
24 AMM December 2017 http://www.miningmonthly.com
NEWS
Oil from recycled tyres could
prove a handy fuel source.