Okay Guys anybody have any ideas about what to do with old tires? I really dont want OCD,but I would like good ideas from an economic standpoint,that would handle most of the problem-Kevin
Here’s a company that claims to be recycling over 130 million tires a year
Thank you very much Texases-Kevin
@texases, I didn’t mean to hit the disagree button. I was going for your link and my thumb landed on disagree instead. I apologize.
No problem!
Here’s some interesting info about scrap tires:
Your local municipality probably has events throughout the year, in which they accept oil, batteries, tires, etc.
Mine does
Well I think they do,but I’m never around when that happens,actually I think they accept tires at the transfer station(they actually need a certain amount to meet a recycling quota I believe)doesnt really bother me to pay a reasonable disposal fee.
But hear this, when you could leave tires with abandon at a largely unmonitored transfer site,there was this cat who would dipose of tires from a neighboring county(they had a disposal fee) He would bring them when no one was around and dump them at our site and make money doing it,so I guess He spoiled it for everyone.
Well from what I have been reading,the old tires make cleaner boiler fuel then coal,so whats not to like?I guess thats were OCD comes in on the Green Folks behalf.Dont get me wrong,I’m all for clean and green,but when there is a good solution that dont quite fit some Folks ideas of how it should be done,I look askance-Kevin
Tires here are just turned into the local recycling operation for $1-2 each. Then they are sold, ground up, recycled, used for fuel, roads, etc. That’s someone else’s problem. Don’t leave old tires laying around though. The water collects in them and is a perfect haven for disease carrying mosquittos. Get rid of them or drill holes in them to drain the water.
Our fair city allows you to drop off 4 tires for free.
Thanks Fellas,I believe part of the the problem with old tires is they are a type of thermosetting plastic and you have to break the bonds of vulcanization to remold the rubber’
Anyway,I want to ask again,where are my tweels?-Kevin
Kevin, FYI, tire rubber is permanently chemically “cured”, so there is no way to “remold” it. It can only be ground up into “crumbs” for use in roads, etc, or burned for fuel.
Thanks Jes,so its a type of thermoplastic then?-Kevin
@kevin, here’s a summary of how tires are made:
@keith corrected my incorrect terminology earlier. Tires are made by a “thermosetting” polymerization of polybutadiene in combination with other materials.
The resulting rubber compound breaks down under heat so it can’t be melted and reformed, as opposed to a thermoplastic which can:
The last paragraph here describes why tire rubber can’t be “unvulcanized:”
On a side note, many solid rocket propellants use a tire rubber component (hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene, or HTPB) as a binder/fuel in combination with an oxidizer like ammonium perchlorate. The resulting compound has the consistency of a pencil eraser and burns vigorously.
Good info-Kevin
And to think that when I was a little kid in the early 60s the old tires were used to get the brush piles burning good. My dad would get permission from someone to cut firewood along a river during the winter when the ice was thick. We’d drag all the brush to the middle of the river and throw an old tire on the pile…douse it with deisel and lite er up.
And you saved all the drain oil in a 5 gallon bucket. When the gravel driveway got too dusty in the hot summer, you would carry the bucket down the driveway and using an empty large coffee can…with holes punched in the bottom…you would sprinkle the oil on the driveway.
It never dawned on us in the 50s and 60s that we were poluting. It was just one of those things that you did to maintain the place…just like having a burn barrel!!!
@ Jesmed,whats that stuff they used in the SRBs on the space shuttle?,seems like they said,they had done burned about all of that it was enviromentally sane to do(something about the high Al content) will be happy to see the demise of a lot of infernal engines,again-where are my “tweels”?-Kevin
Yeah we used to dump the used oil on the driveway too, and of course buried the dead cats and fish in the ground too. I think you need a permit for that now so maybe they’ll come and dig my dog up.
Talk about hazards, they used to use dioxin to control road dust! I seem to recall they used it in the north woods of MN for the same purpose decades ago, looking for verification.
“The children of Times Beach loved sliding around in Bliss’ purple-tinted goo, and no one gave the substance a second thought until animals (particularly horses, who had contact with Bliss-sprayed roads and barn floors and riding rings every day, all year round) started dropping dead. Soon people started to get sick, too. In 1979, the EPA came to town and took soil samples, and in 1982 the agency announced that the levels of dioxin–“the most potent cancer-causing agent made by man,” the newspaper said–in Times Beach were off the charts. The agency evacuated the town just after Christmas. In all, the agency spent $250 million and incinerated 265,000 tons of dioxin-tainted soil.”
@kevin, Shuttle solid boosters used PBAN polymer as a fuel, similar to HTPB. Yes, powdered aluminum was also a component of the propellant. But the exhaust wasn’t really toxic. Aluminum oxide is harmless.