The world of tire recycling is expanding with dizzying speed, and now we can add Lehigh Technologies’s deep freeze to the mix. The company has come up with a new tire recycling process that produces a fine powder instead of the crumbs and nuggets produced by conventional recycling.
As reported by Phil McKenna of Technology Review, the new process involves freezing shredded tires in a bath of liquid nitrogen which chills them down to minus 100 degrees Centigrade, and then smashing them to smithereens. Sounds simple, but sometimes simpler is better: the World Economic Forum placed Lehigh and its new recycling process among its 2010 Technology Pioneers, under the tantalizing theme of “Embracing Disruption.”