ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—After years of research and development, Titan Technologies Inc. has successfully activated the carbon it produces from its proprietary scrap tire recycling process.
This means the company can now assure prospective licensees of "a definitive market" for the 50,000 pounds of carbon each of its plants can produce daily, said Ronald L. Wilder, president of the Albuquerque-based Titan Technologies.
Waste water treatment plants use activated carbon, as do coal-fueled power plants to absorb mercury from flue gases.
Tests performed by Massoud Rostam Abadi of the University of Illinois-Illinois State Geological Survey showed Titan's activated carbon to be superior to other commercially available carbons in both applications, according to the company's Web site.
Titan has "reached a plateau" in its operations, according to Mr. Wilder, but he expects that to change very soon.
"We feel the time is right for our product now, because we're finally going to get an energy policy in this country," he said. "When we get an energy policy, there should be some pretty generous tax credits for recycling technologies, and potentially some significant government money."
Titan describes its technology as a "proprietary catalytic process that transforms pyrolysis ...into a low-temperature, low-cost, energy-efficient technology." Mr. Wilder said his company could provide useful products to industry while cleaning up waste tire dumps and landfills.
"We estimate some 65 million barrels of oil per year could be taken out of landfills," he said.
Titan has licensed three plants now operating in South Korea and Taiwan, Mr. Wilder said, with four more in the works for the U.S. and Europe. The Asian plants have the capacity to process 10,000 automobile tires per day, he said.