March/April 2003
Tire wire is on the road to becoming a full-fledged commodity, thanks to new technology and efforts to develop specifications for the material. Still, plenty of challenges remain.
By Robert L. Reid
Steel often takes an expensive detour on the road to recycling scrap tires. That’s because the steel recovered from recycled tires is sometimes so contaminated with rubber and other material that it isn’t an attractive product for ferrous consumers. Thus, the wire regularly ends up in a landfill.
That’s an ending no one likes, of course. Landfilling rubber-contaminated steel is expensive and wasteful. Both the steel and residual rubber are usable raw materials if they can be separated in an efficient and cost-effective manner. That’s just what various companies and organizations are trying to do, from equipment manufacturers and processors experimenting with new tire wire-recovery technology to an effort by various stakeholders to establish an industry standard for tire wire consistency and quality.
The goal is to convert this so-called waste into a genuine commodity. While these efforts seem to be gaining momentum, history suggests that they’ll likely face a bumpy road ahead.
Definitions and Difficulties
First, some background: The term “tire wire” generally refers to two types of material. One is a heavy-gauge steel loop known as bead wire that secures a tire to its rim and helps provide an airtight fit. The other is cord or belt wire, a thinner-gauge material that runs under the tread of a steel-belted radial tire, adding strength and durability while also improving handling, explains Michael Blumenthal, senior technical director of the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) (Washington, D.C.).
A typical 20-pound passenger car tire contains slightly more than 21/2 pounds of bead and belt steel, while larger SUV tires have a bit more and truck tires contain as much as 10 pounds, Blumenthal says. Currently, U.S. scrap tire recyclers could recover 75 million pounds or more of tire wire annually. While the actual amount being recovered is unknown, it’s likely to be relatively small.
Offering two key points about tire recycling, Blumenthal states that the main goal is to recover the rubber for various markets, while the tire-wire steel is a byproduct at best. Second, tires definitely aren’t designed for recycling—at least not when it comes to separating the steel from the rubber.
“Tires are made for two purposes—performance and safety,” he says. So rather than designing tires that can more easily be recycled into their rubber and steel components, tire manufacturers will instead “continue to look for ways to better adhere the rubber to the steel.”
Moreover, for many years the issue of steel in tires wasn’t much of an issue since there essentially wasn’t any way to extract it. Until the early 1990s, tire-processing equipment mainly produced 2-inch chips for the tire-derived fuel (TDF) market, Blumenthal says. The chips were cut cleanly, with the steel left inside the rubber and not exposed, adds Charles Astafan, general manager of Columbus McKinnon Corp. (Sarasota, Fla.), a manufacturer of tire-processing equipment. Without the technology to break down the rubber into smaller pieces, any resulting waste was usually landfilled, regardless of its steel content.
At that time, disposal was actually a good thing for the future recycling of tire wire. That’s because, if a processor tried to sell his tire wire, the results could be disastrously counterproductive. As processor Jerry Swensen, president of Auburndale Recycling Center Inc. (Auburndale, Wis.), notes, when tire recycling was just getting started about 10 to 15 years ago, the rubber contamination rate for tire wire was around 30 percent. One buyer for U.S. Steel told him about a bale of tire wire so contaminated with rubber that a magnet couldn’t even lift the material. And when the bale was finally dropped off the truck, it fell apart, creating a huge mess.
Experiences like that—which apparently were far too common—meant that “for a long time no one would talk about tire wire,” Swensen says.
A Brief Boom
Toward the middle of the 1990s, new processing equipment and booming steel demand made it both possible and profitable to grind tires to smaller and smaller pieces for the growing crumb rubber market. This also meant that at least some of the liberated steel could be recovered successfully.
A tire processor producing a rubber shred of 1-inch or smaller, for instance, could then run this material through a series of magnets and air classifiers to recover the steel and blow off the fluff (the nylon or other synthetic material that forms an inner layer for pneumatic tires). The result was essentially a three-part stream of clean rubber, clean wire, and rubber contaminated with wire, which still represented some 30 percent of the total flow, says tire processor David Forrester, CEO of TIRES Inc. (Winston-Salem, N.C.).
The clean steel could be sold to mills, especially when markets were strong, because the material was a good ferrous product. Chopping or densifying clean wire into bales or briquettes sometimes made it even more attractive. Moreover, the chemistry of tire wire produced a “bonus” for certain steel consumers because of the brass and copper coatings on the material, noted the Pittsburgh-based Steel Recycling Institute (SRI) in a 1996 article. During this period, SRI worked with RMA to compile a list of mills or foundries willing to use or at least evaluate tire wire as part of an effort to promote greater recovery of this steel.
Rubber-contaminated wire still had to be landfilled, however. Even bead steel that had been removed from the tire before processing was often so covered with rubber that its primary application was to anchor the base of drums or cones used in roadway construction projects.
Then, when steel markets collapsed in the late 1990s, the recycling of tire wire went equally flat. “You couldn’t give the stuff away,” says RMA’s Blumenthal. As a result, many processors either stored the material or went back to landfilling it.
Even SRI let its earlier effort to boost recycling of this “challenged” product become dormant. As Greg Crawford, SRI’s vice president of operations, explains: “In days of greatly depressed scrap prices, it wasn’t particularly productive to promote or advocate the use of tire wire above other grades that were more readily available and usable.”
On the Road Again?
For several years, the recycling of tire wire was essentially stalled. Even today, Crawford doesn’t expect “much change in the market that will create a strong general demand for tire wire scrap.” Still, there are some success stories as well as recent developments that point to renewed opportunities.
For starters, there are consumers currently melting tire wire. Demand may not be booming, but Tom Wendt Jr. of Wendt Corp. (Tonawanda, N.Y.)—which manufactures and distributes complete tire wire processing systems—says he has clients who have sold wire for $20 to $70 a ton as recently as the second half of last year.
“Some steel consumers need the material very, very, very clean—95-to-98-percent clean or cleaner,” Wendt says. “Others will accept material that’s 90-percent clean and pay less for it. The range of its value is all over the board because the buyer has all the power.”
In other cases, consumers will take the material for free, which at least saves processors from paying to haul away and landfill their wire at anywhere from $25 to $50 a ton, industry sources report.
One such consumer of free tire wire is TAMCO Steel (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.), which has been using the material in its mix since 1996. TAMCO started melting tire wire to reinforce its commitment to protecting the environment, says Leonard Robinson, environmental/safety manager, who stresses that the mill doesn’t “make” half a million tons of steel a year, it “recycles” that amount of steel. But this quasi-public relations move has since turned out to make sense both economically and technically.
Over the years, TAMCO’s consumption of bead and belt steel increased from 676,000 pounds that first year to more than 16 million pounds in 1999 before dropping back to roughly 7 million pounds in both 2000 and 2001. Equipment changes at the mill and other factors recently sent those numbers down further, Robinson says. Currently, the steelmaker is taking only bead wire from a single supplier, though Robinson expects that TAMCO will eventually use even more than 16 million pounds annually.
“The steel in bead and wire is a really good grade,” he says. And unlike many other steel consumers—who reportedly are demanding cleaner and cleaner steel all the time—TAMCO doesn’t mind if its tire wire has some rubber on it. That’s because the minimill’s rebar manufacturing processes can actually use the rubber’s carbon content as well as its Btu value, Robinson explains.
What TAMCO needs, though, is consistency. “If we knew how much rubber was coming in, we could make better recipes,” Robinson says. TAMCO would even consider paying for the wire if processors could meet certain conditions, such as densifying the material and providing a specified quality in reliable quantities.
The Machine Age
The development of technology designed specifically to produce cleaner wire products is another hopeful sign for tire wire recycling. Recovering clean rubber will always be the primary goal of tire recyclers, but these machines also treat the recovery of steel from scrap tires as a potential revenue stream in its own right.
Wendt Corp., for instance, has for several years distributed heavy raspers from Denmark’s Eldan Scandinavian Recycling A/S that enable processors to recover and sell tire wire that otherwise would go to a landfill. One California tire recycler, for instance, estimates that its Eldan equipment saves it as much as $8,000 a month. In addition, Wendt recently designed what it says is the first baler specifically intended for tire wire.
Another technological innovation is Columbus McKinnon’s CM Liberator, now in the prototype phase, which is designed to generate dual revenue streams of rubber and steel, says Charles Astafan. With special interior “armor-plating” to handle the rough conditions of ripping the wire free of its surrounding rubber, the CM Liberator is essentially a primary granulator that works together with a customer’s shredders, he says.
Though trying to recover steel isn’t a completely new concept for Columbus McKinnon, the emphasis is now much stronger, Astafan says. “We’ve had customers seek steel as a revenue product before but on a very, very limited basis, with maybe 50 percent of the material that came off the magnet sellable,” he notes. “Now we’re shooting for more than 90 percent.”
And the benefits go beyond simply avoiding landfill costs or adding extra ferrous revenue, Astafan says. That’s because crumb rubber for markets such as playground cover is far more valuable than rubber chips sold for fuel or civil-engineering projects. “Once you remove the steel, the rubber increases in value three to four times,” he says.
For processor TIRES Inc., the technology that’s made all the difference is the Clean Wire System (CWS) from Bi-Metal Corp. (Ridgefield, Conn.). The CWS is a “patented classifier” that works in conjunction with a tire processor’s existing granulator, notes Mark Bielicki, Bi-Metal’s president. The system combines nonblinding screening, agitation, and magnetic separation to produce wire that’s at least 98-percent free of rubber, though some of the material might have to pass through the system twice or more to reach that level of cleanliness.
Like many other processors, TIRES Inc. used to landfill much of its contaminated wire or sell a portion to mills or auto shredders that could blend the wire with other steel, says David Forrester. Since installing the CWS more than five years ago, however, the company has been able to sell every pound of clean wire it produces. “Instead of a cost stream, we now have a second income stream,” Forrester says.
Good crumb rubber that was previously lost can also now be recovered, he adds, and “you can market yourself as recycling that much more” of the scrap tire.
In other developments, some processors have even experimented with their own innovations. Mahantango Enterprises Inc. (Liverpool, Pa.), for instance, built a machine to debead truck tires and is now working on a method of completely automating debeading, notes Troy Hess.
But better equipment isn’t the whole answer, says RMA’s Blumenthal. “There’s a human element in there,” he stresses, meaning that all the pieces of equipment must be organized well and the operation managed properly if the tire recycler wants to be successful. Blumenthal recalls one firm that spent a record $55 million putting in the latest crumb rubber technology that could have also produced a clean wire byproduct. Instead, the whole operation failed because it was designed poorly and managed inefficiently.
Seeking a Spec
Another key to the future of tire wire recycling was the establishment of the Tire & Rubber Division and the Scrap Tire Processors Chapter within ISRI, industry observers note. This occurred in late 2001 and was followed by the formation of a task force charged with improving the marketability of tire wire, including developing ReMA specifications for the material. This tire wire task force—which includes processors, consumers, and equipment manufacturers—has been examining tire wire issues ranging from cleanliness and density to metallurgy and packaging. The group hopes to offer a draft version of ferrous tire wire specs to ISRI’s board of director’s at the association’s convention in Orlando this April, says Tom Tyler, ISRI’s associate counsel and director of state and local programs.
After developing tire wire specs, the task force plans to work on educational materials—including a glossary of terms—to help processors meet the new specs, inform consumers that the specs have been developed and help them understand what those specs contain, and promote tire wire recycling, Tyler explains, stressing that “tire recyclers want to make tire wire a commodity just like other types of processed scrap.”
Though various industry observers express approval and support for ISRI’s efforts, tire wire must still overcome various roadblocks before becoming a full-fledged commodity. Chief among these will be the “acceptable” level of contamination, which will be hard to determine and perhaps even harder to achieve.
Tube City Inc. (Glassport, Pa.), for instance, says the tire wire it has examined had 3-to-5-percent contamination, but even that wasn’t clean enough for its brokerage customers, says account executive Ken Puckett. He adds, though, that “imagined concerns” about tire wire could be greater than any actual problems associated with the material.
Still, even two consumers who are well-informed about tire wire—both serve on the ReMA task force—have had trouble getting tire wire clean enough for them to use.
Kevin Torres from Bayou Steel Corp.’s Mississippi River Recycling division (La Place, La.) says his mill experimented with bead wire for roughly 18 months a few years ago but doesn’t currently use any. That’s because the material the mill tried, which was supposed to contain 5 to 10 percent rubber, turned out to contain more than 10 percent.
Meanwhile, Ron Silber of Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point Scrap Processing in Baltimore says his site has found only a single processor able to supply belt wire that was clean enough (2-to-4-percent rubber) and free from unwanted nonferrous contamination. Unfortunately, that lone supplier isn’t producing any belt wire at the moment, Silber adds, so Sparrows Point isn’t melting any. (The mill does use bead wire, which it considers a separate product.)
To Bale or Not to Bale
Packaging is another key issue being examined by the ReMA task force, notes Mark Rannie, vice president of Emanuel Tire Co. (Baltimore), who chairs the group. Here, the question is whether and when to densify tire wire into a bale or briquette vs. offering the material loose.
Baling is essential, some processors and consumers note, because loose tire wire is difficult to charge into a furnace. One consumer compares it to trying to move a giant Brillo pad. “If you grab one piece, the whole pile goes,” says TAMCO’s Leonard Robinson. For Troy Hess of Mahantango Enterprises, unraveled bead wire becomes “like 50 fishing lines all in the water at the same place. It’s a nightmare trying to load it on a truck.”
As a result, ISRI’s task force is trying to determine how best to keep the densified material from breaking apart during handling. Last summer, Emanuel Tire worked with two other companies to perform drop tests on various tire wire bales, notes Mark Rannie. In addition, Wendt Corp. will make—for free, in some cases—test bales of wire for customers who send the material to its headquarters to familiarize processors with how to bale the wire, what the bales look like, and to help them educate their consumers, says Tom Wendt Jr.
Some of those consumers could be a tough sell. In part, that’s because unchopped tire wire is extremely springy, which can potentially cause problems if the bale isn’t strong enough or if a bale isn’t cut open properly. “Handled improperly, they can really fly apart,” says one observer.
Another roadblock could be tire wire’s old, bad reputation. Echoing other processors and consumers, TIRES Inc.’s David Forrester—who sells all his tire wire loose—explains: “You’d need an awful lot of credibility with your mills before they’d open up their doors to a densified material that they can’t see whether it’s good or bad.”
Indeed, most of the tire wire currently being sold is delivered loose and often baled later by the consumer, industry sources agree. That way, the consumer can both check the material’s quality and combine it with other ferrous products to make the most useful package. Even then, however, tire wire remains problematic. One trader with experience both as a broker and at a steel mill recalls that the thinner wire damaged the hydraulics of baling systems and was hard to contain in one place. The result was that a lot of small, sharp pieces of steel were dispersed, puncturing tires on mobile equipment.
What’s Down the Road?
So will tire wire recycling accelerate in the years to come or end up stuck in neutral? It’s hard to say. Some processors definitely see renewed interest. After five years of little or no activity, Auburndale Recycling now has more than a half dozen consumers looking at its tire wire, says Jerry Swensen. Other processors tell him similar stories. “The interest is there again,” he says. “Everyone’s feeling more positive.”
Industry observers can also point to other one-time contaminants or wastes that managed to become valuable commodities. “Many years ago, you could have an entire load of scrap rejected if it had one tin can in there,” recalls Tube City’s Ken Puckett. “Now we handle thousands of tons of baled steel cans.”
Likewise, TAMCO’s Leonard Robinson sees tire wire having the same potential as used oil filters. “People used to pay to get rid of oil filters,” he says. “Then we took them for free. And when the recyclers started processing them, by shredding, now they’re getting paid.”
TAMCO now takes and pays for some 2 million oil filters a month, Robinson says. That transition from the landfill to the bottom line took just three or four years for used oil filters, though it did require some regulatory assistance from the state of California. Still, “the blueprint of success with used filters can apply” to used tire wire, Robinson asserts.
Robert L. Reid is managing editor of Scrap. •
Tire wire is on the road to becoming a full-fledged commodity, thanks to new technology and efforts to develop specifications for the material. Still, plenty of challenges remain.