Diesel oil from old tyres

Paul Archer, a former firefighter from Durham, has invented a process to turn old car tyres into good-quality diesel oil. His organisation, UTD (Used Tyre Distillation) Research Ltd, has a working prototype of a machine that is set to process up to two million tyres a year at the company's first UK plant near Wrexham, North Wales.

UTD's process is called Continuous Reductive Distillation. It involves breaking up old tyres into fist-sized chunks and loading them into a machine that looks like an industrial-scale tumble-drier. There, they are heated in a sealed, oxygen-deprived atmosphere until the volatile constituents separate from the carbon and steel solids. Some of the gases given off are recycled to power the heating process, but most are condensed into oil.  Steel, carbon black and oil emerge from the other end - all valuable commodities that can be sold.

As well as being an entrepreneurial success, the process is also good news for the environment. The problem of disposing of old tyres is huge and growing: every day in Britain, over 100,000 worn tyres are taken off cars, vans and trucks. Although some tyres are reused as retreads, many more are either incinerated or sent to landfill. Continuous Reductive Distillation is a promising alternative. Tyres are diverted from landfill, while the oil that is recovered reduces the need for fossil fuel extraction.