For the processing run, Neste sourced pyrolysis oil derived from discarded vehicle tires by Scandinavian Enviro Systems, a Swedish company developing technologies to recover materials from end-of-life products. The goal of Neste’s pilot run was to evaluate the potential of chemical recycling beyond plastic waste to potentially broaden the pool of waste streams that could be processed into high-quality products.
Just as with hard-to-recycle plastic waste, a large amount of tires today ends up in landfills or incineration at the end of their life cycle. The composition of tires as a mix of several materials makes them difficult to recycle with mechanical recycling methods. Hence, there is a strong case for using chemical recycling to help keep valuable materials in circulation – and Scandinavian Enviro Systems has developed a pyrolysis technology for extracting carbon black and oil from end-of-life tires.
