Recovered carbon black 'needs more industry support'
31 Mar 2023
Deeper cooperation key to rCB delivering significant benefits to the tire & rubber industry
Hamburg, Germany – The recovered carbon black (rCB) industry will require deep levels of support and cooperation to deliver on its potential to significantly reduce the environmental impact of the tire & rubber industry.
That’s according to a paper by Martin von Wolfersdorf, who has identified a series of ‘mega challenges’ facing what is still, essen[1]tially, a start-up industry.
In a paper presented* at the Tire Technology Expo 2023 conference, von Wolfersdorf estimated the average capacity of furnace process plants in the EU at around 113 kilotonnes per annum (ktpa) in 2021.
That compared with a ‘conservatively estimated’ that average capacity for rCB plants of around 3.5ktpa in 2021 and projected to rise to 13ktpa by 2025.
“The rCB producers are new companies and to scale up, they need investment,” he noted. “They don’t get investment because they don’t yet have the product [capacity]. Without end-product people don’t want to talk to smaller companies.”
Addressing these issues, believes the analyst, will require new levels of communication and cooperation throughout the supply-chain to establish standards, build up capacities and raise awareness of the role of rCB in the tire & rubber market.
Meanwhile, the paper showed that most new rCB projects are currently running 6-12 months late: global capacity is set to grow from 73ktpa in 2021 to 331ktpa in 2025 – almost a year later than previously planned.
To develop more quickly, believes von Wolfersdorf, the industry will need to establish common specifications around parameters such as consistency, composition and PAH-content as well as performance in rubber compounds.
Read the full report in the March/April issue of European Rubber Journal magazine.
