Due to the increasing number of cars and trucks all over the world, used tires are available in large quantities at a very low cost. With a bit of clever recycling, you can get a lot out of used tires: granule in various sizes, steel, and profit. The sales income naturally depends on the quality of the output material, requiring a process that is as efficient as possible. Virtus designed a system dedicated to tire recycling, which ultimately produces very high-quality material for recycling. Final products could be either shreds for thermal recycling, predominantly used in the cement industry, or crumb rubber of about 5 mm size used in various applications.
The first step is the newly developed Virtus X heavy-duty shredder which can shred passenger car tires of up to 800 mm into strips and pieces of approximately 150 mm x 300 mm.
Virtus tire shredders are heavy-duty single shaft shredders with gravity in feed, specifically designed for the grinding of tires. They feature additional wear protection compared to other shredders. The machine is equipped with a flat rotor, made of highly wear resistant steel, with added weld on hard facing for a longer lifetime. The cutters used in these tire shredders are made from a newly designed, specialized material to ensure longevity and optimal performance. As opposed to other systems, the Virtus system does not require that the tires be de-beaded. For larger truck tires we modified our proven X Series shredder. The so called Tire Shredder can shred truck tires of up to 1500 mm into shreds of approximately 150 mm x 300 mm.
In both cases, these shreds are discharged by a conveyor belt and transferred next to the T Series second stage tire shredder. This tire shredder reduces the material into pieces of about 20 mm. This step helps separate the tire rubber from the steel. A combination of cross belt magnetic separators and magnetic drums split the various factions at this stage in the process. During metal separation we can take out about 99% of the total steel content. The steel-free granule can then be packed and used as refuse-derived fuel or transferred to the granulating process.
After shredding and steel separation, the tire shreds will be transferred to the granulation process. For granulating of the rubber shreds, our heavy duty H granulators with a special closed H-rotor are used to reduce the rubber down to a size of < 5mm in two steps. Throughout this process the material is separated on Virtus screens and the last metal contamination is eliminated by additional magnetic drums.
Tire shreds after the first step in the X heavy-duty shredder
Rubber crumb after the second step in the T tire shredder
239-219-1800
(239) 219-1900
sales@virtus-equipment.com
9120 Centerlinks Commerce Dr. Unit 4
Fort Myers, FL 33912