From Waste Tires to Gold Dust: How Old Rubber Makes New Money

From Waste Tires to Gold Dust: How Old Rubber Makes New Money

Do you know tire? Of course you do. In today's fast-moving world, cars, trucks, and trains are everywhere. Tires of all shapes and sizes either carry us to far-off places or bring distant goods right to us here. But did you know that besides rolling down the road, these tires can actually be crushed into powder and used to make other useful items?

Before turning this trash into treasure, however, tires have to go through a specific process.

Simply put, it’s all about making big things smaller. The whole tire is first cut into small blocks, then repeatedly crushed and screened into powders of different sizes.

But there has other important parts inside. To support heavy vehicles and passengers, tires are built with steel wires inside. So, to get clean rubber powder, the thick steel wire around the tire's rim must be removed first. There are two ways to turn a tire into rubber blocks. The first way is by using ring rolling machine and comprehensive tire block making machine. The second way is by using tire puller and rotating net tire shredder machine. Comparing the two, the first method is much faster and more efficient.

Once we have the rubber blocks, a conveyor belt moves them into a buffer silo. From there, they go into the rubber grinder machine to be crushed. The crushed pieces land on a vibrating screen for sorting. Pieces that are small enough drop right through the mesh, while the oversized ones are sent back into the grinder for another round. This cycle repeats until every piece is the right size. That is the integrated rubber grinder and recirculating system.

Remember the steel wire we mentioned before? Aside from the thick rim wire, there are also tiny, steel wires mixed into the rubber bits. To separate over 95% steel wire from the rubber powder, the properly sized material passes through a magnetic steel wire separator, which uses magnets to pull out these tiny wires. The material then goes through a second round of screening and magnetic separation to make sure it's 100% pure.

Finally, a fiber separator removes any leftover fabric strings, and the finished rubber powder is ready to be bagged up. This gives us the exact rubber powder we need. If a buyer needs the powder to be extra pure, a dust collection system can be added to trap airborne dust during the process, making the final product even cleaner.

So, what is the return rate of the whole line? Using the Chinese market as an example. One ton of steel-belted tires costs around 2,000 RMB. A production line that makes 1 to 1.2 tons of rubber powder per hour costs about $95,000 USD. If you run the machines 8 hours a day, 25 days a month, you will produce about 8.8 tons a day and roughly 2,640 tons a year.

One ton of scrap tires yields about 65% rubber powder. With the current market price of rubber powder at 3,200 RMB per ton, that powder brings in 2,080 RMB per ton of tires. On top of that, the 25% of steel wire removed can be sold as scrap steel for 1,600 RMB per ton, bringing in another 400 RMB. This makes the total revenue 2,480 RMB per ton of tires.

After factoring in running costs like electricity, labor, and machine wear and tear, the net profit comes out to about 280 RMB per ton. That translates to a net profit of 2,380 RMB per day, 61,600 RMB per month, and 739,200 RMB per year.

Therefore, we can comfortably conclude that this entire production line can recover its investment cost within less than one year.