New waste tire recycling plant to open in Kazakhstan

The first recycling plant for old tires in Kazakhstan was recently put into operation. Germany-based MeWa Recycling Maschinen und Anlagenbau GmbH supplied the Central Asian country with the entire processing line ready for operation. Kazakhstan Rubber Recycling will in future be producing a clean rubber granulate and an active fine powder for use in road construction.

Long roads and great differences in temperature between the winter and summer months pose a special challenge for road construction in Kazakhstan. The active fine powder produced by the new plant can in future be added to the bitumen and thus substantially increase the quality and lifetime of the asphalt.

The plant was inaugurated in early July in the national capital of Astana with participation from government representatives. The privately-owned plant will process around 11,000 of used HGV and car tires per year using technology from MeWa.

Tires with a diameter of up to 1.5 meters will be fed into a MeWa UC 150 rotary shear. The machine breaks the tires into approximately palm-sized shreds with patented and low-wear cutting system. Throughputs of up to seven tons per hour are possible. A granulation line from MeWa then gradually breaks these shreds into a granular size of around eight millimeters. After each work step, different separation techniques then separate the textiles, stones and steel cord that the tires contain.

Granulators that are integrated into a sophisticated final cleaning process grind the granulate further into grain sizes of between 0 to 4 millimeters. MeWa has optimized this process step in the last few years and now offers granulates in previously unmatched purities. 99.95 percent by weight of the secondary raw material is free of steel and textile lint at the end of the processing chain. This granulate is used for the production of floors in sports facilities and playgrounds, rubber mats for housing and agriculture, and for molded part products in road and garden.

The plant will also include a special fine grinding process, also developed by MeWa, that processes the granulate further into the ActiMeWa. The resulting flexible fine rubber powder can be used in road construction. It will not only compensate for differences in temperature, but the active powder will also considerably reduce the noise level of the road surface and offer substantially more grip for vehicles, even in the rain.

The first section of the plant was transported by rail to Kazakhstan in the autumn of 2008. This was followed by the granulate cleaning unit in the spring of 2009.

In order to be able to guarantee smooth and efficient delivery and construction in Kazakhstan the complete plant was built in a one of MeWa’s warehouses in Gechingen and then disassembled and put into standard freight containers for onward delivery. The modules could then be reassembled on site piece by piece – similar to a construction kit.