Tire Manufacturing Plants

Illinois. They were built in 1983 and 1984, respectively. The furnaces were designed by Basic Environmental Engineering, Inc. of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. 

Currently, only the Decatur incinerator is operating. The Des Moines incinerator was shut down in 1987 for exceeding opacity limits. The Des Moines plant produces very large agricultural tires, which are much more difficult to burn without opacity problems than the passenger tires produced at Decatur. Reopening the Des Moines incinerator would probably require the addition of a baghouse, which is not economically feasible. 

Each of the two incinerators has the capacity to burn 100 tons of waste per day and produce approximately 20,000 pounds per hour of steam for use in the tire manufacturing process. Twenty-five per cent of the load to the incinerator is whole tires and rubber scraps. The remainder consists of paper, wood, and miscellaneous solid waste. The percentage of rubber does not exceed 25 percent so that the flue gas can stay within the opacity limit. Even though only one quarter of the weight of the load is tires, the tires account for 80 percent of the Btu consumed by the furnaces. 

Both furnaces are fed by the same type of system, utilizing a charging hopper and a hydraulic ram. The ram pushes the solid waste into a primary combustion 

The staged combustion system allows the operator to maintain good control of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, keeping them below environmental limits. The ash from each plant is removed from the furnace bottom and sent to a water bath. 

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Cardiovascular Effects. In a cohort mortality study of workers in a large rubber and tire manufacturing plant, Wilcosky and Tyroler (1983) found a significant increase in mortality from ischemic heart disease in phenol exposed workers. Of the 25 solvents used in the plant, phenol exposure showed the strongest association with mortality from heart disease, greater even than that observed for exposure to carbon disulfide, the only known occupational cause of atherosclerosis. 

Jungclaus GA, Games LM, Hites RA. 1976. Identification of trace organic compounds in tire manufacturing plant wastewaters. Anal Chem 48 1894-1896. 

A Health Hazard Evaluation of Nitrosamines in a Tire Manufacturing Plant... 

Air Samples NMOR, NDMA, and NPYR were found during the first NIOSH visit in air samples collected at a tire manufacturing plant in Maryland. One process sample, collected at a feedmill, contained 250 yg/M3 of NMOR, a level several times higher than has been reported for any airborne nitrosamine at any industrial site (1). Maximum concentrations of NDMA and NPYR found in the hot process areas were 4.4 yg/M3 and 3.4 yg/M3, respectively. Over the following 7 months, ventilation improvements and changes in chemical formulation of the rubber resulted in a 200-fold reduction in NMOR levels and elimination or reduction of other nitrosamines at most sites. Results are shown in Figure 2, and Table I. 

Scrap tire combustion is practiced in power plants, tire manufacturing plants, cement kilns, pulp and paper plants, and small package steam plants. 

Tire Manufacturing Plants Cement Kilns Pulp and Paper Plants Small Package Steam Generators. 

Tire manufacturing plants Cement kilns Pulp and paper plants Small package steam generators... 

The microstructure of polybutadiene can have a significant effect on the elastomer s performance. For example, lithium-catalyzed solution polymers, containing approximately 36% cts-butadiene, tend to process easily in tire manufacturing plants whereas high cis-polymers produced with titanium or nickel catalysts (cis-content >90%) tend to be more difficult to process in tire factories (Table 4.2). For example, gage control of extruded components may be more difficult though such compounded polymers have been reported to show better abrasion resistance when compared to the low cis-polymer [2]. 

In conclusion, it is evident from the above discussion that anionic polymerization has emerged from a laboratory curiosity to an important industrial process in a relatively short span of time. Currently, over a million tons of polymers are produced by the anionic route in about twenty manufacturing plants around the world. We at Phillips are quite proud of being one of the pioneers along with Firestone and Shell in harnessing this new technology to commercial applications. The fact that our polymers find such wide ranging applications from tire treads to injection molded blood filters and from lubricant additives to solid rocket binders bears ready testimony to this. 

Experience in tire manufacture at a given plant shows that an average of 4.8% of the tires are rejected as imperfect. In a recent day of operation, 60 out of 1000 tires were rejected. Is there any reason to believe that the manufacturing process is functioning improperly ... 

Because of the increased use of synthetic materials in making new tires after World War n, the reclaim industry has dramatically decreased in size. During World War n, about 60 percent of the rubber in tires was reclaimed rubber. Each of the major tire manufacturers has discontinued operating reclaim plants in the last 8 to 10 years, until now only about one to 2 percent of the raw material for tires is reclaim. There are currently only two companies that produce reclaim rubber, i.e., partially-devulcanized rubber, from whole tires for use in tires and other rubber products. These companies are Midwest Rubber Reclaiming Co. in East St. Louis, Illinois and Rouse Rubber, Inc., in Vicksburg, Mississippi (22). 

In the past three years there have been major increases in the utilization of waste tires as a fuel. Applications have included power plants, tire manufacturing facilities, cement kilns, and pulp and paper production. These applications have demonstrated the capability to extract energy value from the tires in an environmentally acceptable manner, while at the same time alleviating tire disposal problems in their communities. 

The incinerator configuration used by Firestone at these two plants appears best suited to a tire manufacturing operation with capability to use the process steam. Each of the incinerators has the capacity to handle approximately 500,000 tires per year. No additional tire-burning incinerators using the pulsed hearth design have been built since these two plants were constructed. 

The book is presented in two parts. Part I covers the problems associated with scrap tires and identifies existing and potential source reduction and utilization methods that may be effective in solving the tire problem. Barriers to increased utilization and options for removing the barriers are identified and evaluated. Part II provides information on the use of whole, scrap tires and tire-derived-fuel (TDF) as combustion fuel, and on the pyrolysis of scrap tires. The use of whole tires and TDF as a primary fuel is discussed for dedicated tire-to-energy facilities. The use of whole tires and TDF as a supplemental fuel is discussed for cement manufacturing plants, electric utilities, pulp and paper mills, and other industrial processes. The focus of Part II is on the impact of burning whole tires and TDF on air emissions. The information in the book is from the following documents ... 

NDMA is not an industrially or commercially important chemical nevertheless, it can be released into the environment from a wide variety of manmade sources. This is due to the inadvertent formation of NDMA in industrial situations when alkylamines, mainly dimethylamine and trimethylamine, come in contact and react with nitrogen oxides, nitrous acid, or nitrite salts, or when trans-nitrosation via nitro or nitroso compounds occurs. Thus, potential exists for release into the environment from industries such as tanneries, pesticide manufacturing plants, rubber and tire manufacturers, alkylamine manufacture/use sites, fish processing industries, foundries and dye manufacturers. At this time, NDMA has been found in at least 1 out of 1177 hazardous waste sites on the National Priorities List (NPL) in the United States (VIEW Database 1989). 

NDMA may occasionally be emitted into the atmosphere from sites of manufacture/use of dimethylamine and other sites at which NDMA is inadvertently formed, i.e. tanneries, pesticide manufacturing plants, rubber and tire industries, etc. NDMA may also form in nighttime air as the result of the atmospheric reaction of dimethylamine with NOx (Cohen and Bachman 1978, Fine et al. 1976a, Fine et al. 1976b, Hanst et al. 1977). 

There are numerous nontire rubber fabricators in the world today (Table 1.2). A far larger number of different rubber fabrication plants exist for the nontire than for the tire sector. The economies of scale are different for tire manufacturing compared to fabrication of rubber articles and products for the nontire sector. Achieving effective economies of scale for a tire plant requires a certain minimal size of perhaps 25,000 tires per day. On the other hand, the minimal capital and size requirements for production plants in the nontire sector are considerably less. Therefore, the nontire sector is populated with a larger number of production plants, representing a broader mix of large, medium, and small plants. 

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