TyGRe starts his “second phase”

The third meeting of the TyGRe project was held in Budapest, Hungary on Tuesday and Wednesday, 5th and 6th of July, 2011. The sessions were beautifully orchestrated by Dr. János Szépvölgyi, Director of the  IMEC (Institute of Materials and Environmental Chemistry – Hungary). All of the working partners were represented.

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ECOMONDO is one of the most important international trade fairs on sustainable development, material and energy recovery in Europe; a Special Event focused on TyGRe project will be held in Rimini Fiera during the 15th annual ECOMONDO. The Event is organized by ENEA and ECOMONDO CTS in the framework of “Thematic Seminars”

For more information, please see the ECOMONDO program

  From waste tyres to SiC powders

Fig. 1 different TyGRe SiC powder batch

Fig. 2 sintered pellet and SEM image showing the microstructure of this pellet

Recently added to TyGRe's site:

• New publications in DOWNLOAD section.
• Some weblinks in LINKS section.

Aachen, October 25-26, 2010

TyGRe is now one year old. After nearly one year from the starting date of TyGRe, 1 September 2009, the Second project meeting was held on 25 – 26 October 2010.

The meeting was hosted by RWTH (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen -  Germany) in Aachen, Germany, and all the partners were well represented.

An internal technical review of the experimental activities was conducted during this meeting and each WP leader presented the work developed during the first year of the project.

After the introduction of Dr. Galvagno, the project coordinator, who gave an overview on the state of the project, detailed presentations on the main aspects of the project were made: The final results of the thermal treatments tests by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development - Italy) and TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey - Turkey) were presented to the partnership.

Silicon Carbide powder waste tyre derived was obatined by IMEC (Institute of Materials and Environmental Chemistry – Hungary). The powder was sintered into test samples manuafctured by COMETAS (Copenhagen Membrane Technology A/S - Denmark) demostrating that TyGRe SiC can be used for industrial purposes.

The life-cycle based sustainability assessment (LCA, SLCA/SLCC) of the TyGRe system compared to a reference system is in progress. At present a preliminary analysis of the systems, including goal and scope definition and model description of the innovative system, has been produced by Febe (FEBE ECOLOGIC - Italy)  and ENEA.

The whole prototypal plant flow-sheet has been defined. The plant which will be hosted at ENEA site in Italy comprises several process modules. Enough time was dedicated to present first module technical specification.

The project officer contribution enriched the discussion by focusing the attention on important remarks and technical aspects.

Concerning the dissemination, several actions have been started and realized: project results have been presented to International Congresses, TyGRe project was presented in events directed to tyre recyclers. A new ETRA website is under construction, which will be linked to the TyGRe and partner websites. A brochure on TyGRe's new material is in preparation. Other Seminars, meetings and participation to conferences are planned and will be published on TyGRe website.

At the end of the meeting, a new appointment was fixed (third project meeting).

Innovation: Tyre Recycling 2010

Wednesday to Friday 17-19 March 2010

Crowne Plaza Europa Hotel, Brussels

TyGRe Project was presented at the 17th ETRA Conference in March 2010

The 17th Annual ETRA Conference on Tyre Recycling, held at the Crowne Plaza Conference Center in Brussels, was an important event for TyGRe project:  from Wednesday 17th through Friday 19th March, the Conference hosted many events involving TyGRe peoples. Over 120 delegates participated, representing all sectors of the tyre recycling market: industries and public and private sectors.

A Scientific Meeting of TyGRe project was hosted by the Conference with the scope to verify the status of the project in compliance with the workplan.

The Project Officer of the European Commission, Wojciech Klimek, accepted the invitation to attend the meeting and was present. The settlement of the Board was presented by Maurizio Coronidi from ENEA, leader of the project management workpackage.

All the Partners were well represented and had the possibility to show the advancement of their work into the Project. A preliminary prototype plant flow sheet was presented and discussed for improvements. At the end of the discussions and the presentations, the raised questions were examined in detailed to address the future work.

During the Conference, government officials at Commission, national and local levels as well as researchers from industry and academia, contributed to the discussions. TyGRe partners could meet ETRA members participating to planned session and special events such as “Innovation in tyre recycling” and “Pyrolysis forum”.

“Info Day”

Entitled ‘Innovation in tyre recycling’, the program focused on the vast advances that have been made in the development of sophisticated recycled materials and their use in traditional applications in substitution of virgin resources. In this frame a dissemination event focused on TyGRe was organized. The “Info day” mainly oriented toward the recycler stakeholders was held on 18th March: TyGRe project was presented to the audience during the “Eco-Innovation: Imagination and Creativity” panel. In this session, the discussion was focused on the problems affecting waste tyre market and, particularly, the limits to be implemented of conventional thermal treatments on waste tyre.

Sergio Galvagno, Project Coordinator, and Valerie Shulman, General Secretary of ETRA, provided an overview on the research and the impacts introduced by the project on this sector.

The main goal is to produce a high added value material starting from a low cost silica source (like quartz sand) and waste tyre. The hope for the future is that this ceramic material could introduce new source of Silicon Carbide (SiC) for a variety of applications.

Project partners presented the technologies involved into the process under development and highlighted the innovative aspects of the project, including the fact that the output being developed is a very high-added-value product, produced in an environmentally sound manner with fractional energy reliance compared to the model.  

Concerning the gasification process, Hakan Karatas from TUBITAK (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) explained the technologies available for the gasification of the materials and the clean-up of the gas output and presented the energy production options that could allow to recover the energy to be used in different activities later the project. The optimization of the gas separation processes by membrane was described by Thomas Harlacher from RWTH (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen - Germany).

Krista Hald from COMETAS (Copenhagen Membrane Technology A/S - Denmark) explained the importance of sintered silicon carbide powders insisting on the most important characteristics for industry uses. The importance of testing the different ceramic products during the project was emphasized.

Finally Patrizia Buttol from ENEA presented the main aspect considered in SAT (sustainable assessment of the technologies) and tools such as LCAs, LCC, SLCA (social life cycle assessment) to examine the sustainability of each facet of the project.

Once the technical presentations were completed, ETRA (European Tyre Recycling Association) discussed the potential markets for the material produced and how to make other industries and public enlarged to its potential advantages.

An interesting discussion was developed involving speakers and attendances concerning the scope of the project and the expected improvements for the market.

Pyrolysis forum

The “Pyrolysis Forum” is a special session dedicated to waste tyre thermal treatments and related aspects. The forum, held on Friday 19th March, is a regular date of the ETRA Conference for a long time now. Considering the many years experience in this frame, the forum is a time for discussion and comparisons among industries and academics working in this field.

TyGRe project was presented in this session.

Sabrina Portofino performed a project overview, focusing the attention on the aspects related to waste tyre steam gasification. 

Portici, November 3-4, 2009

The kick-off meeting was held on 3-4 November 2009 at the ENEA Centre of Portici, on the gulf of Naples. The location and the whole organisation were both beautiful and effective and conducive to work at hand. All the Partners were well represented and had the possibility to show their organisations and back-grounds.

After the presentation of each organisation participating to TyGRe partnership, the meeting, chaired by the ENEA project coordinator, was developed allowing detailed presentations on the main aspects of the project: administrative, scientific, market exploitation and dissemination. The workpackage leaders provided a description of their respective activities and illustrate their own workplan.

It was quite interesting that many of the participants represented sectors and core activities that had nothing do with each other in the past. Thus, the presentations perfectly reflected the innovative aspects of the project, i.e., putting together recycled tyres and alternative silica source (i.e. glass) to produce a high quality silicon carbide powders. The apparent ‘presence of strangers’, or ”out-siders” made the meeting even more exciting.

Considerable attention was paid to the administrative and management aspects of the project: besides the presentations dealt by ENEA staff,  the project officer contribution enriched the discussion focusing the attention on important remarks and procedural aspects.

During the presentation of exploitation and dissemination activities, ETRA promoted the participation of all the partners in order to comprise all the different market and scientific aspects in market analysis and project results exploitation.   

The interesting discussions provided a deep examination of the different project aspects favouring the experience exchange, the potential problems identification and possible solutions: in other words the meeting put the basis for a common and shared work method, essential for the good project development.

At the end of the meeting, a new appointment was fixed (Second project meeting); in addition, the attendees agreed to meet again to check the scientific activities development and ETRA invited the whole partnership to have a  ‘teaching and awareness’ day during the annual ETRA conference scheduled for 17-19 march 2010 in Brussels.

Rimini, November 4, 2010

Ecomondo is one of the most important international trade fairs on sustainable development, material and energy recovery in Europe. In 2009 alone, reports show that over 63,330 attendees visited 1,050 exhibitors. More than 11,000 participants attended 213 seminars on a variety of environmental and recycling topics, which brought together over 1,350 speakers and 443 journalists from national and foreign media.

On November 4th 2010, during the 14th annual ECOMONDO, a Round Table on Tyre Recycling was organised with a prestigious list of speakers. Dott. Edo Ronchi, former Minister of the Environment, and Dott. Giancarlo Longhi, former Director of CONAI, headed the list, with more representative speakers talking about the specifics of the sector. The main issues about tyre recycling were discussed.

At the moment, there is a wide debate in the sector due to the impact of the introduction of the producer responsibility in Europe. In some countries, this could establish bodies to manage the post consumer tyres, with a specific goal of a specified quantity to be recycled, and the engagement to valorise the output material obtained from recycling. This is the main condition to make the system efficient and allow in the future the reduction of the eco-tax paid by the consumer.

In this context the TyGRe project represents an important example to the auditors, as well as to the esteemed speakers of the round table. The project coordiantor, Dr. Galvagno, gave an extremely effective picture of TyGRe and of the progress already achieved, which became one of the main interesting topics of the meeting. As per the comments after the session, this project has impressed the participants for its original idea: the combination of two input materials, i.e., the rubber from tyres which provides the carbon, and a low cost silica source, as well the high value of the new material obtained: Silicon Carbide.

The round table was organised by ARGO (Italian National Association for Rubber Recycling – Italy), the Italian member of ETRA the European Tyre Recycling Association, who is also one of the partners of the project.