Happy New Year 2023 to all friends of recovered carbon black!
Dear colleagues and friends of recovered carbon black,
here is your monthly dose of recovered Carbon Black news.
2022
The year 2022 is closing and while we won't do a full year review, we can say that the year was full of events, good and bad. For recovered carbon black there was certainly good progress, culminating in a very busy Smithers recovered Carbon Black Conference in Berlin. For carbon black there is a new kid on the block (methane pyrolysis carbon black) and there were shortages in the USA (due to EPA enforcements) and in Europe (due to 32% dependency on Russian carbon black). The ongoing war in Ukraine will keep on contributing a level of uncertainty in 2023 too.
Thank you!
I am thankful to my many consulting clients and industry colleagues along the whole tire recycling value chain, including small technology companies up to large corporations in the tire and chemical industry. Thank you for your business and your interest in recovered carbon black! 🙏
New free resources
I have started putting previously payable webinar content on my Youtube account, starting with webinars on "recovered carbon black in plastic concentrates" and "secrets of growth hacking". I hope you find these valuable and if you do, it would be nice if you could like the videos and leave me a feedback comment!
2023 rCB documentary film project
Next year, I will produce a documentary film on the global recovered carbon black industry and I need your collaboration for this project. The process is that I come to your production site and office, interview you and plan the filming with you and then capture footage of your recovered carbon black production, while you cover my travelling expenses. I will contact major companies by email in January. If you want to participate, you can also contact me pro-actively. I am really exited to do the film project, it will be my most important project in 2023!
Big Niutech order for Europe
The Chinese pyrolysis kiln manufacturer Niutech has reported a 358m CNY order (about 47m Euros) from a European customer for 160 ktpa capacity and for use with waste plastics and waste tire feedstocks. Typically, the Chinese tire pyrolysis equipment manufacturers are not on my radar, in particular because I do not see any demonstrated capabilities for what the Chinese would call "deep processing" of refining raw recovered carbon black to commercial recovered carbon black.
I had a consulting client who bought a simple Chinese bath kiln in order to retrofit a microwave into the system. He said that the Chinese technology is generally OK, but the materials used are low quality, e.g. carbon steel instead of high tech INOX alloys typically used for European kilns.
I am not working with or affiliated with Niutech Energy, but I visited Mr Niu and his sales director Maggy Zhou in 2018 in Jinan, China. And I know of at least one installation in Brazil that is still operating and producing recovered carbon black (although this company had to invest extensively in the re-engineering and in the refining line). In Niutech presentations, some European installations are shown as reference projects, but the German and Hungarian operation were closed a decade ago and the Estonian operation is slow running.
Who could be the customer?
What do you think? Let me know below this article! 👇
🥂 Happy New Year 2023 to you!
Wishing you all a happy & peaceful new year 2023! I am looking forward to collaborating with you in 2023!
Best wishes from Berlin,
Martin
Prospects for recovered Carbon Black 2023
Wolfersdorff Consulting Berlin
#circulareconomy #recoveredcarbonblack #carbonblack #pyrolysis #sustainability
