An engineered rubber powder, called PolyDyne, can offset a significant percentage of the oil needed to manufacture many synthetic rubber and other petro-chemical products. Lehigh Technologies, Inc., manufactures PolyDyne by grinding rubber from recycled scrap tires into an ultra-fine powder form.
“While consumers felt the pinch at the gas pump, less attention has been paid to the cost of oil’s impact in other areas — such as the multi-billion dollar petro-chemical and synthetic rubber industries,” said Dennis J. Gormley, chief executive officer at Lehigh. “These industries account for about one-third of all oil-derived products.”
It takes about nine and a half gallons of petroleum to make the various petro-chemicals that comprise just one tire. And petro-chemicals are used in the manufacturing of other rubber and plastics products ranging from car parts to plastic garbage cans to high-tech spray coatings to the soles of your shoes.
All of these products can be created using substantial loadings of engineered rubber powder derived from recycled tires, tremendously reducing the country’s dependency on petroleum and saving half a billion gallons of oil each year, according to Gormley.
Not only can Lehigh’s PolyDyne save manufacturers money, but it has also been tied to performance improvements in the manufacturing process. For instance, PolyDyne has increased tensile strength and durability in the development of consumer goods by plastics manufacturers.
Because PolyDyne is created from scrap rubber, Lehigh is also reducing the large amount of old tires that lie in waste across the U.S.
“Seeing the vast amounts of waste in tire junkyards across the country inspired us to seek a solution for turning scrap tires into a resource that can be recycled and manufactured into a new useful material,” said Anthony Cialone, chief operating officer at Lehigh.
Scrap tires that have been coarsely ground into “crumb rubber ” have been used in asphalt and limited rubber products for years. Lehigh Technologies is the first to put the practice of recycling rubber together with state-of-the- art equipment and specialty patents to turn scrap tire material into ultra- fine engineered rubber powders — powders as finely ground as talcum powder.
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