WARREN, Australia — Green Distillation Technologies Corp. Ltd. (GDT), a developer of a "destructive distillation" tire recycling process, claims to have secured a U.S. investor willing to commit up to $100 million for the construction of recycling plants in the U.S.
GDT, a Warren-based company that has been developing its tires-to-oil technology since 2009 at a pilot plant in Warren, declined to identify the U.S. investor or the potential site or sites for the proposed plant.
The agreement provides funding of up to $100 million for the roll out of additional plants in the U.S., if the first project is successful, the company claims.
Commenting on the deal, GDT Chief Operating Officer Trevor Bayley said the agreement was achieved through a considerable amount of negotiation.
"In the light of this burgeoning environmental disposal problem, our approach provides a recycling solution as we turn a problem into valuable and saleable materials," Mr. Bayley said, noting that there are more than 250 million end-of-life tires generated in the U.S. annually.
Green Distillation has developed what it claims is an emissions-free technology that is capable of recycling whole end‐of‐life car and truck tires into saleable commodities of carbon, oil and steel.
The company claims that the oil produced through its technology is comparable with "light crude, which is low in sulphur and easy to refine into petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum-based products."
GDC also maintains that the carbon produced in the process is a high-grade product with high potential for sale as carbon black.
The deal marks GDT's second overseas venture, following an agreement in October last year with waste-to-power specialist Volco Power to establish up to five tire recycling plants in South Africa.
That deal could potentially be worth up to AUD$50 million, according to the company.
GDT states an ideal plant complex would comprise six tire processing modules capable of processing approximately 700,000 old tires per year into 8 million liters of oil, 7,700 metic tons of carbon black and 2,000 tons of steel.
In addition to its pilot plant in Warren, GDT is working on a second plant to be built in Australia, in Toowoomba, Queensland.