Tire Recycling System to be Installed

Maryland Environmental Service (MES) has purchased a complete Eldan Scandinavian Recycling E-4000t scrap tire recycling system from Wendt Corp., Tonawanda, N.Y.

MES is planning a January 2003 start-up at a facility in Baltimore County, Maryland, where the Eldan system will be installed. The plant will process 1.5 million scrap tires annually. The tires will be collected from tire manufacturers, solid waste facilities and scrap yards. The crumb rubber produced will be sold to manufacturers of both consumer and industrial products.

The new project will be wholly owned by MES, which will hire and train 20 new full-time employees to work in two eight-hour shifts per day. The building will accommodate incoming tires, processing equipment and the finished crumb rubber product.

On average, four to five trailer loads of tires will arrive at the facility daily and will be unloaded directly into the building. Tire generators will be charged a tipping fee for tires brought to the facility. MES officials say there will be no outside storage of tires and that any tires not in the building will be kept in enclosed trailers.

MES chose the Eldan Scandinavian Recycling equipment after Lee Zeni and Greg Africa of MES toured a facility in Triptis, Germany, last fall that had recently installed a similar system supplied by Eldan SR.

“The technology we saw at the German plant is world-class,” says Africa. “We are very excited about this installation. It represents the first complete crumb rubber system supplied by Wendt and Eldan SR in North America.”

Tom Wendt Jr. of Wendt Corp. is optimistic the MES installation can generate additional interest in Eldan equipment. “With increased demand for crumb rubber, we expect the MES plant to be a showplace and a model for future installations throughout North America,” he comments.

The Eldan E-4000t system installed by Wendt Corp. features a Super Chopper for chopping whole passenger and truck tires into six-inch nominal chucks that are then further processed with the Heavy Rasper. The Heavy Rasper reduces the chunks into chips smaller than ¾ inches while liberating more than 95 percent of the steel wire for separation with a magnet.

The minus ¾-inch chips are then granulated to minus ¼ inches in size in Fine Granulator No. 1 and then to minus 1/8 of an inch in Granulator No. 2. The finished product is designed to be more than 99.9 percent free of liberated steel and fiber.

James W. Peck, MES director, says that last year the Maryland Department of the Environment and MES officials met with tire dealers, county solid waste officials and auto recyclers. The conclusion was that the state’s scrap tire program needed an adequately capitalized and appropriately equipped scrap tire processor capable of producing high-end, value-added and marketable products from scrap tires.

According to Peck, tires are often shipped out of state and not recycled. “We don’t know whether cement kilns (the primary burner of tires) will want to continue using scrap tires as fuel in the future,” he adds.

With the organization’s emphasis on addressing the State of Maryland’s scrap tire problem, there has been some rancor in the scrap tire industry regarding a government agency’s involvement in what some believe should be a private sector endeavor. “These concerns simply are not valid”, says Peck.

He adds that MES receives no funds from the State of Maryland for its operations in general and for this project in particular. Capital was raised privately with no involvement from state government. The project will be a for-profit venture, subject to the same market forces as those of other scrap tire recyclers.