IPSCO Considers Used Tires for Fuel

IPSCO Steel Co. has been meeting with local elected officials in Alabama for the past two months, trying to round up support for a tentative plan to burn recycled tires to help make steel.

As well, it has approached the Alabama Department of Public Health about obtaining permits. The Canadian company maintains the process would help reduce the steady stream of used tires heading into local landfills as well as save the company money by eliminating the costs of shipping in fuel.

"We think this is a very positive thing that can benefit the entire community and us," said Jon Howley, IPSCO's local environmental manager.

If approved, it would be the third company in Alabama to burn tires. The other two are cement plants, including one in Theodore.

"We believe this project could make a major contribution toward protection of public health and environmental quality of life in our communities," three mayors and a county official wrote to the public health department on March 5.

The three mayors were Billy Bush of Satsuma, Cleo Phillips of Creola and Cleon Bolden of Mount Vernon, the towns closest to IPSCO. The county official was Bill Melton, environmental services director. The letter said they were writing on behalf of a group called the Mobile County Scrap Tire Recycling Alliance.

There is some confusion about who initiated the project. Howley maintains the company was approached by local officials.

However Melton said it was the other way around.

"This is not an initiative by anybody but IPSCO," he said.

IPSCO wrote the letter and "dreamed up" the alliance, he said. Melton signed it because he thought it would provide a concentrated way of getting rid of scrap tires, he said.

However, the alliance has no authority, doesn't meet and has taken no action, he said.

"I think IPSCO wants this alliance to be a public relations support system for them," Melton said. "I think they're trying to give their pitch to the health department and (the Alabama Department of Environmental Management) because they need a permit, and I think they need it a little quicker than the process allows. I'm wary if this alliance is to be used to circumvent any permit process."

Despite his fears, he added, if the company offers an environmentally sound solution to the scrap tire problem, he will support it.

Howley said he was surprised by Melton's comments. His company wants to keep the county in the loop for everything it does on this project, he said.

"We want to work fully for the community," he said. IPSCO, he said, could help relieve some of the tire disposal problem that Mobile County faces and is not just pursuing its own advantage.

Only one other steel company in the United States burns tires. Nucor Corp. began taking recycled tires in 2002 at its plant in Auburn, N.Y.

Burning tires has not much changed Nucor's emissions, said Reggie Parker, supervisor of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, which regulates Nucor's emissions.

Tire burning conjures up stench and images of black smoke, such as are experienced when a tire dump smolders for years. Those fires burn at much lower temperatures -- about 1,800 degrees -- than controlled tire fires, in which steel company furnaces roar at about 17,000 degrees, consuming the rubber and mixing the steel belts with the rest of the steel product, said Michael Blu menthal, senior technical director for the U.S. Rubber Manufacturer's Association, which represents U.S.-based tire manufacturers. Any emissions are caught in filtering equipment, he said.

The nation's pile of scrap tires grows by an estimated 250 million each year, according to Blumenthal's association.

For years, researchers and marketers have looked into ways of recycling old tires. In 2000, a University of South Alabama scientist developed what the university described as a cheaper, more efficient way of turning tires into synthetic crude oil. Old tires have become outdoor mats, shoe bottoms and road surfaces.

Leroy Stebbing, a Nebraska engineer who patented the tires-to-steel technique used by Nucor, said burning tires makes sense because it reduces the need to mine coal and ship it, as well as the need to bury the tires.

"It's almost a perfect answer because you're recycling all of it," he said. "You're recycling steel, you're recycling the energy. Environmentally, it's a great way to do it."  Mobile (Alabama) Register