By CASEY NEILL
No one knows what happens to 60 per cent of Australia’s waste tyres.
“They just disappear,” Clean Energy Group managing director Mike Loone said.
The rest end up in landfill or are illegally dumped, so he set up an Australian-first plant in Dandenong South to turn the situation around.
When a tyre arrives at Clean Energy it’s shredded into a crumb.
“Then we feed it into the reactor,” Mr Loone said.
“The reactor heats at 350 to 400 degrees Celsius.
“Through that process we crack down the chemical elements and extract all the gases from the tyre and condense it into oil.
“Once all the gases are released, we pull out the solid scrap – steel and carbon black.
“The tyre oil we sell as a fuel oil to regional areas of Australia.”
Abattoirs and hydroponic farming setups are key buyers.
Clean Energy is working with refineries with a view to desulfurise the oil and reduce its flashpoint – the temperature at which it gives off sufficient vapour to ignite in air.
“It could then potentially be used in diesel vehicles as a blend,” Mr Loone said.
“Carbon we primarily sell as a heat source, similar to coal.”
He’s also consulting with Boral and other firms about using the black product as a colouring for different aggregate services or in bricks.
“The steel we’ve commercialised as a scrap steel product,” he said.
The gases produced on-site are re-used in the process.
“We’re taking problem waste off the streets, processing it using best-quality standards to produce products that can be used locally,” Mr Loone said.
“The capacity here is 30 tonnes or 3500 passenger tyres a day.
“We’re receiving that many easily. There’s already too many tyres.
“We’ve identified six other sites in Australia where we’d like to expand in the next 12 to 18 months.”
The company’s next sites will be “strategically located all over the country”.
“To move tyres is really expensive,” he said.
“The tyre takes a lot of space for what it is.
“If you take logistics out of it, you win half the battle.”
Clean Energy Group employs eight people.
“We plan to increase that to 20 over the next three months,” he said.
He’s working on buying a new shredder that will reduce tyres to a smaller size and remove more steel before the heating process, increasing capacity.
Mr Loone founded the company in 2011 with a focus on solar panels.
He teamed up with business partner Salih Hulusi, who had contacts internationally for the technology.
They brought in Salih’s brother as an investor and shareholder.
The team started looking at other energy streams “and waste to energy was the next one”.
“We identified tyres were a significant problem to Australia,” he said.
They looked at pyrolysis technology – using heat to break something down – in China, Thailand, Turkey, Egypt and Korea and decided to bring it to Australia.
Mr Loone said he was nervous about breaking new ground.
“But it’s worked elsewhere in the world, there’s no reason why it can’t work here.
“Companies have been looking at it in Australia for 20 years, but no one was doing it.
“The banks were nervous.
“The EPA was nervous because they haven’t seen this technology before.”
Following two years of research, Mr Loone settled on a manufacturer. Plant construction started in January last year and finished in February this year.
“We had to put in the pain to make it work,” he said.
“We’ve done it and no one can take that away from us.
He said the company was consulting heavily with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA), Sustainability Victoria and Economic Development Victoria before making its next move.
“This is all private money from the family,” he said.
“We’re now seeking funding and support from the private sector and government to expand the business to other sites to really contribute to a solution for all tyres.”
