THE CONTEXT

At the current state giant end-of-life OTR are not recycled. Due to their size, it is impossible to process them and obtain the granule and powder as it is done with the car and truck tires. Most of the time they are simply abandoned and only sometimes they are cut to reduce their size in order to be able to transport them awaiting for further arrangements or burned.
It is necessary to emphasize that the giant end-of-life OTR tyres are formed mainly by Natural Rubber that is extracted from rubber trees and it has been included since 2017 in the list of 26 European Critical Raw materials.
With the continuous growth in demand for Natural Rubber, especially from the tyres industries, the expansion of NR processing sector is becoming a huge environmental issue since the industry uses tones of water, energy and large amount of harmful chemicals, releasing wastewaters containing harmful chemicals, hazardous waste and thermal emission.
In order to be able to recycle giant end-of-life OTR and reissue them in a new cycle, the Natural Rubber from them needs to be properly devulcanized together with high level of purity. At the moment conventional technologies do not allow this procedure, both from technical and economic point of view.