Answer to Question #218729 in English for karan

Question

How can tires be reused? Think of innovative ways of reusing/repurposing old tires and giving them a new life.

Answer 1

While tire recycling is widespread, it takes loads of effort.

So, are you thinking about how your tire gets recycled? Here is a step-by-step guide that shows you how

Step 1: Collection of Waste Tires

As you already know, the collection of waste is the first step in any recycling process. At this stage, individuals and businesses dealing in tire recycling collect tires.

Sometimes, individuals who collect scrap tires and send them to points of the collection get paid. Typically, these scrap tires get moved to their collection points once they reach a particular number.

Step 2: Tire Processing (Shredding)

The first step after taking waste tires to processing plants is to cut them into small pieces. The idea here is to reduce the tire’s size into a material that one can handle easily.

With the help of tire shredders, we shred these tires or cut them using the rotating shafts. Eventually, this stage produces pieces of tire shreds of 2-inch length. At the end of this stage, you then derive raw materials that you can use for fuel.

Also, tire processing can take two forms. And that is through mechanical systems or cryogenic systems. So, how do they work?

The mechanical system involves scraping scrap tires into smaller chips at ambient temperature. Typically, you place the rubber shreds into a granulator with screens to track the size the shred gets reduced to.

On the other hand, cryogenic systems shutter rubber size into smaller chips by freezing scrap tires at low temperatures. With the use of liquid nitrogen, you can super-cool these tire shreds. After this, pass the brittle and cold rubber through hammer mills to shatter the brittle rubber into tiny particles.

You will then proceed to remove steel using strong magnets. Also, there is a need to separate the fiber from other constituents using air classifiers. Once you do this, you will have obtained recycled rubber that is clean and ready for other products.

Step 3: Steel Liberation

Here, you process and prepare tired shreds for elimination and separate tire wires from rubbers. This step involves the separation of fiber and screening, of course.

Steel wires, which give resilience and strength to tires, get removed and recycled. You can then take these steel wires to roll mills to be used in manufacturing new wheels.

The leftover rubber is then used as field turfs on playgrounds – called rubber mulch.

Step 4: Screening Stage

The stage after separating wires from rubber is screening. The gist here is to carefully observe the rubber and ensure no wire is left in the rubber. You will essentially screen large volumes and sizes of rubbers with no wires and sort them according to their sizes.

It also involves the elimination of any unwanted substances and reducing the sizes of large rubbers and unwanted leftover pieces.

Step 5: Cleaning Stage

The cleaning stage is the penultimate stage. This involves a thorough cleaning of the screened rubber. Here, you use water and cleaning agents in a thorough cleaning process.

Step 6: Packaging and Transporting Stage

This marks the final stage of recycling tires. The clean rubber derived from the cleaning staged gets packaged. It then gets delivered to factories that need them as raw materials for production in their respective processing plants. Examples of these factories include manufacturers of rubber shoes and playground turfs.