About 15 years ago, this whole subject held huge promise. That’s because each year, about 280 million old tires find themselves in landfills, releasing greenhouse gas emissions and wasting enormous amounts of chemical energy.

It appeared that a large opportunity lay in using pyrolysis, a combination of high temperature and pressure–think of it as combustion in the absence of oxygen, that could capture that energy and yield a host of extremely valuable carbon compounds as byproducts.

When 2Greenenergy was launched in 2009, we went to great efforts to raise capital for waste-tire pyrolysis plants, but nothing seems to have happened, after all that time.

Does the rendering at left above represent an actual, facility?  Probably not.

Waste-Tire Pyrolysis