Waste-Tire To Energy, Fuels

In all candor, my association with the few people who claim to have workable, reliable technology to extract the chemical energy (and other goodies) out of waste-tires has been a disappointment. After several years of work in this arena, I believe that the 300 million tires that wind up in U.S. landfills or recycling centers each year actually do represent a gold mine, and that we’re close to developing the proper extraction tools, but that we’re not quite there. At the same time, we’ve over-developed the rhetoric to make unprovable claims in this regard.

Waste-to-energy generally is a magnet for exaggerated claims, and I believe that’s because the technologies generally are not black and white, i.e., they are not such that they work perfectly or do not work at all. Many of them work on certain extremely specific feedstocks, under certain weather conditions, work for a while (then fail), etc.

Most approaches to clean energy either work well and with ever-improving cost-effectiveness, e.g., wind turbines, solar PV, etc., or fail to function at any level at all, e.g., this fraudster I happened across the other day.

In any case, if waste-tire will ever work well and cost-effectively, the winners will be those who control the tires. And if you think there is a scarcity, please see the aerial shot here: