AquaJet Ltd. has been established to exploit a technology for recycling truck and bus tires that have reached the end of their useful life. Globally, over one billion tires reach the end of their useful life each year. Due to the European Landfill Directive, from 2006 more than 95% of all end of life tires were reprocessed in some way in Europe.
The most commonly used rubber recycling technologies are:
All of them start from shredded tires, which affect the purity of the recycled rubber.
AquaJet has developed a rubber recycling technology based on a proprietary process of milling whole tires with ultra-high pressure (UHP) water jets. It uses whole tires as input, with no need for preliminary shredding. The tread, sides and interior of the tires are treated separately, making it possible to separate the differing rubber compounds recovered. As the reinforcing metal parts remain intact, the carcass can be sold as scrap metal. AquaJet recently adapted the original technology for passenger car tires as well.
With lowest ecological impact, the rubber powder produced is arguably the best rubber recyclate available.
AquaJet’s product is fine rubber powder in the range of 30-400 microns. The technology has been developed for milling of end-of-life tires, but it can be used for milling new but scrap tires.