Scandinavian Enviro Systems’ (publ) (“Enviro”) representative in the UK market, 2G BioPOWER, has been granted the equivalent of MSEK 2.5 in state funding for a feasibility study that will investigate the possibilities for the large-scale introduction of Enviro’s recovery technology for end-of-life tyres in the UK.
The objectives include investigating the possibilities for recovering oil and carbon black from domestic end-of-life tyres.
Every year, the UK generates approximately 450,000 tonnes of end-of-life tyres, of which 400,000 tonnes are ground down to granulate or exported to countries such as India where they continue to be used despite traffic safety risks, or alternately are transformed into low-value oil products with tremendous negative environmental impact.
Since the tyres are regarded as waste, exports are costly and the transportation itself also affects the environment. The state-financed innovation office Innovate UK will therefore fund a feasibility study to investigate the conditions for recovering a large percentage of the end-of-life tyres within the country’s borders more sustainably using Enviro’s patented pyrolysis technology.
The study is primarily interested in the possibilities of recovering and refining the natural rubber-based, renewable oil from the tyres. A vehicle tyre consists of approximately 50 percent oil, a significant portion of which comes from natural rubber.
Enviro’s advanced recovery method makes use of the components that become oil from the tyres, known as pyrolysis oil, that can be refined or used to replace fossil fuel-based oil in several different contexts. In addition to 2G BioPOWER and the engineering company OSL, an international company in the oil sector with operations in countries including the UK will also be involved in the study.