Bridgestone starts limited output of recovered carbon black

TOKYO — Bridgestone Corp. has started producing on a limited scale carbon black and pyrolysis oil derived from waste tires, an effort in line with company's "Evertire" initiative to create a closed-loop approach to recycling tires at the end of their useful life into components for new tires.

This new initiative, set up in partnership with Eneos Corp. — a Tokyo-based oil-refining and energy company —at Bridgestone's Kodaira City research and development park, is part of a broader company plan to work with partners to develop tire-recycling technologies, such as the bioprocessing of end-of-life tires through a fermentation process.

The materials resulting from this process are fit for re-use in the manufacturing of new tires, Bridgestone said.

This project is one of two R&D waste-tire recycling initiatives announced in February 2022 and supported by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

The tests under way are examining technologies for achieving "high-yield production" of chemical products, such as butadiene, using Eneos' oil-refining technologies and Bridgestone's "precision pyrolysis technologies," the tire maker said.

Large-scale verification tests will be advanced by 2030 with the goal to achieve mass production pyrolysis oil and recycled carbon black, Bridgestone said.

As announced last February, Bridgestone's other project involving end-of-life tires (ELT) aims to recover isoprene, a key raw material for the production synthetic rubber, from waste tires.

In that project, the tire maker's partners are: the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tohoku University, JGC Holdings Corp. and Eneos.

The technology will aim to decompose ELTs at low temperatures and depolymerize them using a "specialized catalyst" technology.