1 February 2007 – Rapra Technology is leading a UK consortium of six companies to carry out research into the devulcanisation of scrap tyre rubber.
The two-year project is funded by the DTI within its Design and Manufacture of Sustainable Products programme, whose projects are designed to develop eco-friendly and sustainable processes benefiting UK SMEs. More than £420,000 of direct financial assistance will be provided by the DTI, with the project partners contributing another £420,000 between them.
In addition to Rapra, the consortium partners are PJH Partnership, Martins Rubber Company, BD Technical Polymer, J Allcock and Sons, and Charles Lawrence International. The companies bring a high degree of synergy to the project, having expertise in the recycling of rubber and the production of rubber crumb, supercritical fluid technology, and the compounding and moulding of rubber products.
Work has started on establishing the optimum reaction conditions in an autoclave system needed to achieve a high quality, devulcanised rubber product.
The main R&D effort will then involve successful transfer of this technology to an extruder-based system to enable a continuous process to be set up. The devulcanised product will then be evaluated as a material for the manufacture of a variety of rubber products.
It is crucial that uses be found for used tyre rubber as the material was banned from EU landfill sites from 1st July of last year, says Rapra, a member of the US-based independent testing, consulting and contract research organisation, The Smithers Group.
