Dissolving Tires - Where Do We Go From Here?

At the end of their single use lifetime, what do we do with the billions of tires made each year?
Tires are mostly burned, pyrolyzed into carbon black, methane, oil and other products, or simply ground up and used in relatively low value applications.

We have found a way to break the sulfur-sulfur bonds (the 'vulcanization') used to hold the rubber together. 
Our current research is focused on:

• demonstrate utility of the uncrosslinked oils
  
• improve the process to use less catalyst and/or recover the catalyst

If you are interested in learning more, please contact Mike Brook

Media information

The original paper in Green Chemistry  Zheng, S.; Liao, M.; Chen, Y.; Brook, M. A., Dissolving used rubber tires. Green Chem. 2020, 22 (1), 94-102, DOI 10.1039/C9GC03545A.

McMaster video about the process                             The Globe and Mail article Jan. 13, 2020
Chemistry World article, Dec. 17, 2019

A cartoon of the process