REUSE OF RUBBER

Introduction
Rubber is produced from natural or synthetic sources. Natural rubber is obtained from the milky white fluid called latex, found in many plants; synthetic rubbers are produced from unsaturated hydrocarbons. Natural rubber is extracted from rubber producing plants, most notably the tree Hevea brasiliensis, which originates from South America. Nowadays, more than 90% of all natural rubber comes from these trees in the rubber plantations of Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula and Sri Lanka. The common name for this type of rubber is Para rubber. The rubber is extracted from the trees in the form of latex. The tree is tapped; that is, a diagonal incision is made in the bark of the tree and as the latex exudes from the cut it is collected in a small cup. The average annual yield is approximately 2 kg per tree or 450kg per hectare, although special high-yield trees can yield as much as 3000kg per hectare each year.

Why reclaim or recycle rubber?

Rubber recovery can be a difficult process. There are many reasons, however why rubber should be reclaimed or recovered; Recovered rubber can cost half that of natural or synthetic rubber. Recovered rubber has some properties that are better than those of virgin rubber. Producing rubber from reclaim requires less energy in the total production process than does virgin material. It is an excellent way to dispose of unwanted rubber products, which is often difficult. It conserves non-renewable petroleum products, which are used to produce synthetic rubbers. Recycling activities can generate work in developing countries. Many useful products are derived from reused tyres and other rubber products. If tyres are incinerated to reclaim embodied energy then they can yield substantial quantities of useful power. In Australia, some cement factories use waste tyres as a fuel source.

Recovery of rubber Recovery Alternatives

There are many ways in which tyres and inner tubes can be reused or reclaimed. The waste management hierarchy dictates that re-use, recycling and energy recovery, in that order, are superior to disposal and waste management options. This hierarchy is outlined in Table 3 below.

Recovery process Retreading Regrooving Physical reuse Use as weight Use of form Use of properties Use of volume Material reuse Physical Tearing apart Cutting Processing to crumb Chemical Reclamation Thermal Pyrolysis Combustion Energy reuse Incineration Table 1: Principal rubber recycling processing paths (adapted from van Baarle) Repair

Kind of recovery Product reuse

Product re-use
Damaged tyres are, more often than not, repaired. Tubes can be patched and tyres can be repaired by one of a number of methods. Regrooving is a practice carried out in many developing countries where regulations are slacker and standards are lower (and speeds are lower) than in the West. It is often carried out by hand and is labour intensive. The use of retread tyres saves valuable energy and resources. A new tyre requires 23L of crude oil equivalent for raw materials and 9L for process energy compared with 7L and 2L respectively for retreading. Tyres of passenger vehicles can generally be retreaded only once while truck and bus tyres can be retreaded up to six times. Retreading is a well established and acceptable (in safety terms) practice. The process involves the removal of the remaining tread (producing tyre crumb see later) and the application and vulcanisation of a new tread (the camel back) onto the remaining carcass. In Nairobi about 10,000 tyres a week are received for retreading (Ahmed).

Material re-use
The next step in our hierarchy involves the material being broken down and reused for the production of a new product. As mentioned earlier, in developing countries this hand reprocessing of rubber products to produce consumer goods is well established and the variety of products being made from reclaimed tyres and tubes is astonishing. The rubber used in tyres is a relatively easy material to reform by hand. It behaves in a similar manner to leather and has in fact replaced leather for a number of applications. The tools required for making products directly from tyre rubber are not expensive and are few in number. Shears, knives, tongs, hammers, etc., all common tools found in the recyclers workshop, along with a wide range of improvised tools for specialised applications. Shoes, sandals, buckets, motor vehicle parts, doormats, water containers, pots, plant pots dustbins and

bicycles pedals are among the products manufactured. Another way in which physical reuse can be achieved is by reducing the tyre to a granular form and then reprocessing. This can be a costly process and there has to be a manufacturer willing to purchase the granules. Crumb rubber from the retreading process can be used in this way, as it is a good quality granulated rubber. The reprocessing techniques used are similar to those described in earlier chapters. Granulate tends to be used for low-grade products such as automobile floor mats, shoe soles, rubber wheels for carts and barrows, etc., and can be added to asphalt for road construction, where it improved the properties of this material.

Chemical and thermal recovery This type of recovery is not only lower in the waste management hierarchy, but is also a higher technology requiring sophisticated equipment. The applicability of such technologies for small- scale applications in developing countries is very limited. We will therefore look only very briefly at a couple of processes. Chemical recovery is the process of heating waste rubber reclaim, treating it with chemicals and then processing the rubber mechanically. Acid reclamation uses hot sulphuric acid to destroy the fabric incorporated in the tyre and heat treatment to render the scrap rubber sufficiently plastic to allow its use as a filler with batches of crude rubber. Alkali recovery - Reclaimed rubber, treated by heating with alkali for 12 to 30 hours, can be used as an adulterant of crude rubber to lower the price of the finished article. The amounts of reclaimed rubber that are used depend on the quality of the article to be manufactured.

One form of thermal recovery is pyrolysis. This involves heating the tyre waste in the absence of oxygen which causes decomposition into gases and constituent parts. It is a technology which is still immature in the tyre-reprocessing field.

Energy recovery
Tyres consist of around 60% hydrocarbons, which is a store of energy that can be recovered by incineration. The heat produced can be used directly in processes such as cement making, or to raise steam for a variety of uses, including electricity generation. Again, this technology requires sophisticated plant and its application is limited when looking at small-scale enterprise

Landfill
Landfill is the final step in the waste management hierarchy. The landfill disposal of tyres, if properly managed, does not constitute an environmental problem. However, concerns about conserving resources and energy have seen an increasing opposition to landfilling. Also, public sanitation and municipal waste management is often ineffective in developing countries and scrap tyres are often found littering the streets.