© 2025 Wolfersdorff Consulting Berlin - parts of image © 2022 universade de aveiro, rCB Conference 2022
Dear colleagues & friends of recovered Carbon Black,
Welcome to your June 2025 dose of curated recovered Carbon Black and related news. The views and opinions in this newsletter are my own.
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Overview
To ash-leach or not to ash-leach
To pre-contract or not to pre-contract
Late addition: rCB makes the lettuce grow
Late addition 2: KERA Energy signs PPO distribution agreement
Late addition 3: Ecolomondo Corporation increases shredding volume
Super late addition 1: Green light for Pyrum Innovations 2nd plant
Super late addition 2: News about Murfitts Industries first rCB & TPO plant
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To ash-leach or not to ash-leach
On Monday, June 16th 2025, Andrei Briones-Hidrovo et al. from the Universidade de Aveiro published an inspiring "Environmental Impact Assessment Review" article on "Recovering carbon black from end-of-life tires: A consequential life cycle assessment":
The authors, Andrei Briones-Hidrovo , Sebastião Costa , Cristiana Maganinho , Clara Margarida Silva , João Rocha , Ana Cláudia Dias, Inês Portugal and Carlos Silva are an Ocean's 11 team with regards to recovered Carbon Black. Sebastião, Cristina and Clara have presented research in the Smithers rCB Conferences 2021 and 2022.
Prior research work from Sebastião Costa, Cristiana Maganinho and Clara Margarida Silva has investigated steam activation of recovered Carbon Black. One important learning was that steam activation can come at the price of carbon material loss and it also attaches some hydroxy-groups (-OH) onto the carbon surface. The latter was beneficial for water wettability and the adsorption of methylene blue, but raised dispersion issues in rubber compounding. Maybe it could be developed into an rCB-silane system.
The group also researched the reduction of inorganic material through acid/base leaching (sometimes called "ash leaching") and the reduction of organic volatiles through re-processing in a pyrolysis process.
The new article "Recovering carbon black from end-of-life tires: A consequential life cycle assessment" hence draws from extensive knowledge on rCB and further adds lifecycle assessment research to the topic. It's highlights are summarised as:
Recovering carbon black from end-of-life tires is analyzed
Consequential Life Cycle Assessment is applied
Recovering carbon black presents environmental trade-offs
Demineralization and activation result in significant environmental burdens
Achieving a better environmental profile goes beyond circularity
These key messages inspired me to some thoughts, some of which are part of my classic memes in conference presentations and in my client work:
Correct rCB terminology
Specific to the article, I would say:
Do we need ash-leaching? Until the end-of-life-tyre ("ELT") feedstock already contains significant rCB volumes (which it does not yet in 2025), I recommend against any "ash leaching" processes. Why? The above article gives LCA reasons, but there are also process safety concerns with handling acid volumes at about 10x the rCB volume. Ash leaching will not come cheap either, with CAPEX at ~2.000+ €/t rCB capacity and OPEX at ~300 - 2.000 €/t rCB. And, after all that, even if you get up to 99,5% carbon content, it will still be a mixture of several carbon blacks with carbonaceous residues from coking during the pyrolysis process. As a consequence, no such process has been industrialised and commoditised yet. Or has there? I think it is easier for rCB producers to first commercialise a stable, consistent rCB that is not ash leached.
Do we need High-Quality Reinforcing (HQR) rCB? The innovation and value of a tyre is mostly in the tread, which amounts to about 38% of a typical car tyre. It is therefore logical to request tread grade performance from an rCB. Certainly in Europe, car tyre treads are not even reinforced with carbon black anymore, but instead with a chemical bonding system of silica-silane. I do believe that, for starters, 23% of global carbon black markets (N700 & N600 volumes) is an ample playing ground for the rCB industry, corresponding to a market of some 3.5 million tons per year. And highly reinforcing prime carbon blacks can be produced from TPO using existing furnace process capacity. So, I recommend to focus on what we can do now. Do not (yet) reach for the stars before making money with rCB.
What about rCB grading, e.g. rCB N330? Naturally, any well researched scientific article like the above would come to the limits of rCB terminology (which requires updating) and rCB classification (which finally requires definition). Interestingly the article oriented itself with existing Chinese research articles which called rCB variants following equivalent performance to ASTM D1765 prime carbon black nomenclature. To me this does not make sense and I also do not see any rCB on the eye-level of an N330 prime carbon black for rubber reinforcement. But I very much want to be proven wrong!
Theoretical vs. practical research? This article is well researched and I would love to see more articles like this. There is really only one shortcoming with this article. I would love to see real measured data instead of modelling systems. The opportunities for this kind of in-real-life research are growing, alongside the capacity build-up of the rCB industry. These next years will bring us fabulous data.
Advertisement Want to learn foundations of the recovered Carbon Black development process? Join us for the Smithers rCB Europe Webinar on June 24th at 14h00 pm CEST! Book here.
To pre-contract or not to pre-contract
After "Should we ash-leach our rCB?", the second most popular question I get in my consultancy practice is "Can you sell our rCB?".
Honestly, there are already two things wrong within that short question. The first might be the assumption that you do have recovered Carbon Black, not just a black powdery char. The second might be the thought you could sell rCB product as a commodity, just like prime carbon black.
There always is a third wrong thing, which is implied and typically not said. This is "before we build our production facility" or even "before we get investment from XYZ". Would YOU buy a car from a manufacturer who does not even operate a manufacturing facility yet?
Don't get me wrong. That question comes from my targeted group of key consulting clients. This is what I focus my market scouting work on.
We just need to adjust the expectation level slightly.
In 9 out of 10 cases, the "product" on offer is not rCB. It is not an engineered product. ELT feedstocks have not been curated and controlled. Pyrolysis conditions have not been chosen and optimised for rCB. The milling is insufficient. The product is not pelletised. The product is not quality controlled after production. There is no application development done for it. It is a bit of a poker play.
I love that. There is plenty of improvement potential for that process chain. There are technology solutions for all these problems. Just add money and time and hard work.
But when my industry friends see news like the European Rubber Journal headline " Infiniteria secures full booking for recovered carbon black production", they of course say they want the same "overnight" pre-booking success.
Many do not see that Scandinavian Enviro Systems AB (publ) started rCB application development already 28 years earlier, far from an "overnight" success.
Well, and it also helps that Antin Infrastructure Partners and Michelin are the shareholders. Nothing is worse for a rubber or tyre company than to invest time and money into rCB product approval only to find out that the supplier company went bust in the meantime. This won't happen with Infiniteria. Congrats Stefano Madeddu and team Infiniteria / Enviro! And a special congrats to Bengt Sture Ershag for having started it all!
So, why can't we "sell" rCB? Due to currently missing standards, we need to establish rCB specifications with each and every potential customer. This makes our business process "make to order" instead of "make to stock" like for typical commodities such as carbon black. rCB can be marketed rather than sold. This is more service intense, but it can be done.
Late addition 1: rCB makes the lettuce grow
Jörn Wenger has posted yet another application success with rCB, not in rubber, not in plastics but in growing lettuce. Jörn is producing his AGROVITA CA (Activated Carbon) additive with future agricultural engineer Gustavo Verdun. The images speak for themselves. The lettuce on the left was fertilised with AGROVITA CA, the one on the right is the benchmark. Which veggie is next?
Late addition 2: KERA Energy signs PPO distribution agreement
On Monday, June 16th 2025, Swiss KERA Energy AG signed a plastic pyrolysis oil ("PPO") distribution agreement with Corsair Group International (source: AccessNewswire)
KERA Energy is the sister company of ALPEN Group LLC, founded by CBO feedstock and supply chain entrepreneur Shane Perl . The company already has a trading volume of 300 ktpa of circular and renewable oils from plastics and tyre pyrolysis.
Corsair Group has HQs in Bangkok, Thailand, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and operates a set of 10 x 10 ton Beston Group® batch plastic pyrolysis kilns in Kaipola Jämsä, Finland.
Congrats Shane Perl , Simon Housecroft (KERA Energy) and Jussi Veikko Saloranta (Corsair Group)!
Late addition 3: Ecolomondo increases shredding volume
On Monday, June 16th 2025, Ecolomondo Corporation has announced that it will increase the end-of-life tyre ("ELT") shredding volume at its Canadian Hawkesbury facility by adding a second shift in order to meet rising crumb rubber demand for its TDP reactors after debottlenecking its rCB refining process line (source: TradingView / Reuters).
The plant is designed to process up to 1,5 million scrap tires annually, yielding approximately 4.000 tpa of recovered Carbon Black ("rCB"), 5.000 tpa of tyre pyrolysis oil ("TPO"), 2.000 tpa of steel, and 1.200 tpa of pyrolysis gas.
Great work Eliot Sorella & team! Have a great start-up!
Super late addition 1: Green light for Pyrum Innovations 2nd plant
Good news on June 30th, the last day of the month. We love it!
The European Rubber Journal (and other sources) report about Pyrum Innovations AG having received approval from local authorities in Perl-Besch for the construction of its second facility.
The capacity is specified at 22,4 ktpa ELTs, a 12% capacity increase from the same technology also installed at Dillingen. This is in line with the 12,5% capacity increase announced for the 4 reactor, 90 ktpa ELTs project with VTTI.
The second plant (and maybe a third) is needed to really improve the company's financial results, which CEO Pascal Klein also communicated openly in a presentation during the BLACKCYCLE visit in Dillingen.. Pyrum Innovations already has increased its sales, but there is only a limited volume of rCB & TPO available from Dillingen site.
I find it fabulous to see Pyrum Innovations building its second plant, despite current economic volatility and uncertainty. Congrats Pascal Klein and team!
Super late addition 2: News about Murfitts Industries first rCB & TPO plant
Also on June 30th, Tyrepress published a paywalled article about Murfitts Industries' first rCB & TPO plant.
The article quotes that Murfitts is investing £14 million in an end-of-life tyre processing project for thermal and material recovery of tyre materials. This looks like a small investment for typical rCB / TPO plant sizes to me. It might only be the ELT preparation stage without pyrolysis, or a small stage 1 pyrolysis pilot plant installation. It was said that the facility will be commissioned at the end of 2026.
The location is also interesting. Murfitts has submitted plans for a facility at Michelin's Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, retreading facility.
I believe that there could be synergies between retreading and rCB / TPO production. And I am also a big supporter of locating tyre recycling facilities at locations of closing tyre plants. A prominent example is the Mobivia / BLACK STAR Pneu Léonard retreading facility at the former Bridgestone site in Béthune, France.
There are quite a few locations where tyre production will stop in Europe, including 2 Michelin sites in France and two in Germany and 2 Goodyear sites in Germany. These are opportunities for rCB / TPO producers to locate their plants on brownfield sites.
In any case, I am stoked to see progress at Murfitts. Congrats Mark Murfitt, Chris Norris and team!
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