Evonik solutions for sustainable tire recycling
- Free flow aid
- Anti-caking agent
- Anti-blocking agent
Silica keeps rubber powder and granules free flowing
How can vehicle tires be produced more sustainably using recyclate from end-of-life tires? This is a major R&D topic in the tire industry. Silica from Evonik supports effective rubber recycling as a processing aid. Due to the high shear forces when grinding scrap tires, or rubber in general, liquid components are brought to the surface. This makes the granulate or powder sticky and difficult to sieve and process. Silica forms a barrier layer around the rubber particles, dries them and keeps them flowable. This improves the recyclate’s quality, because the finer used rubber can be ground, the higher the quality of the rubber powder obtained for downstream products. Moreover: Adding silica as free flow aid keeps rubber mills clean and prevents system downtimes caused by clogging.