- Title: How old car tyres can drive sustainable battery production
- Date: 27th November 2023
- Summary: VALPARAISO, CHILE (RECENT) (Reuters) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) BERNARDITA DIAZ, T-PHITE CEO, SAYING: "It is important to understand that the use of natural resources and the issue of the planetary shift is something that we have already overcome almost halfway through the year. It is therefore important to understand that natural resources are already very limited and the fact
- Embargoed: 11th December 2023 12:16
- Keywords: Car tyres End of life tyres Lithium-ion T-Phite batteries battery carbon black lithium pneumatic tyres recycling tires
- Location: VALPARAISO, CHILE / AL SALMI, KUWAIT / LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / VARIOUS UNKNOWN LOCATIONS
- City: VALPARAISO, CHILE / AL SALMI, KUWAIT / LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / VARIOUS UNKNOWN LOCATIONS
- Country: Chile
- Topics: South America / Central America,Science
- Reuters ID: LVA008112426112023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A Chilean start-up is reinventing the wheel, almost literally, recycling used car tyres into modern electric car batteries.
T-Phite, part of the privately funded Sustrend Laboratory, says its process can help solve the annual problem of what to do with more than a billion end-of-life tyres (ELTs) and help make lithium-ion battery production more sustainable.
“There are many technologies for recycling tyres, but there is one that is pyrolysis, where three by-products are obtained,” Bernardita Diaz, T-Phite CEO and co-founder, told Reuters.
“One is pyrolytic oil, the other is steel and the third is black carbon. This black carbon has no market outlet. And what did we do? We transformed this tyre waste into a graphitic material for use in batteries for electro-mobility,” she said.
Their process involves refining carbon black, recovered from ELTs by pyrolysis, into battery-grade graphitic hard carbon, an essential component in the anode of lithium-ion batteries.
“Our process is innovative, mainly because we solve two problems. One is the final disposal of tyres and the second is the demand that is being generated for electromobility materials. And when you obtain materials from other waste, you are generating what is known as the circular economy,” Diaz said.
Globally about 29 million tonnes of tyres end their life each year, enough to entirely cover Washington DC, according to Diaz.
Ironically, the shift to electric cars is expected to increase that number because of the extra wear and tear on the tyres caused by the weight of the battery.
Despite rising global rates of recycling in recent years, hundreds of millions of ELTs that are scrapped each year end up in landfill or on stockpiles, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
T-Phite say they have received significant interest from potential investors looking to scale up the process to an industrial level.
(Production: Stuart McDill) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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