Trans-Tasman collaboration aims to make high-purity graphite from old tyres






Tyre recycling business Green Distillation Technologies has announced a partnership with New Zealand’s CarbonScape to create graphite.

 

GDT operates a facility at Warren, Central NSW, where it uses its Randall Process to heat tyres and separate them into oil, carbon and steel. The deal with CarbonScape could further turn carbon into high-purity graphite.

 

“Our carbon is high quality for use in a variety of products such as printer’s ink, computer cartridges and even cosmetics,” said chief operating officer Trevor Bayley in a statement. 

 

“But by enhancing it to graphite it could sell for multiples of the current price which is a very significant difference.”

 

Marlborough-based CarbonScape’s focus is and continues to be processing biomass and sawdust into graphite, which has end uses in products such as lithium ion batteries and supercapacitors. According to an article by NZ’s stuff.co.nz, CarbonScape was established in 2006, originally to “produce green coke for steel plants [and] discovery of graphite came through experimentation at high temperatures and research into various catalysts.”

 

GDT is commercialising a process that can turn 10 kilograms of end-of-life tyres into four litres of oil, two kilograms of carbon and two kilograms of steel. It received approval in April to set up a second plant in Queensland, and is in the capital raising stage for this.

 

Picture: CarbonScape

 

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