Eco Investor May 2015

Unlisted Companies

Australian Tyre Recycler in Edison Awards

A green technology company that recycles old car and truck tyres was Australia's first finalist in the Edison Awards, and a bronze winner when the awards were announced in New York in April. The Edison Awards are claimed to be the world's top award for innovation.

Green Distillation Technologies Corporation has developed a technology which recycles old tyres into saleable commodities of carbon, oil and steel. It has a pilot plant in NSW which is in the process of being upgraded to full production, at which point it will be capable of processing 19,000 tonnes of tyres per year. This is about 3 per cent of the used tyres that Australia generates each year.

The disposal of old car and truck tyres is a serious international environmental problem. Although other techniques such as crumbing and chipping have been developed, there is not sufficient demand for the products that can be made to provide a solution.

The Edison Awards were founded in 1987 and are named after the inventor, Thomas Edison.

Craig Dunn, chief executive of Green Distillation Technologies (GDT), said the international recognition is welcome. He said the company started in 2009 to prove its technology and the capability of the process, and to generate a positive cash flow by selling the resulting carbon, oil and steel.

The GDT technology is known as "Destructive Distillation". It uses heat to reduce tyres into their constituent elements which then reform into oils that are distilled. Carbon is the most abundant element in tyre rubber and is delivered in high purity powder form. Steel is collected clean and unchanged.

"The oil produced from the GDT process can be used as a heating fuel, direct into some stationary diesel engines or is capable of further refinement into automotive or aviation fuels, while the carbon is a high grade product that can replace those sourced from fossil fuels and the steel is returned directly to tyre manufacturers for reuse," he said.

"The process is not only emission free but the recycled oil is used as the heat source for the production process.

"It is the only process available in Australia that remanufactures the rubber from old tyres into a different energy form as the other recycling methods merely change the shape or appearance of the rubber," he said.

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