A Perth-based company using thermal desorption to recycle rubber tyres is preparing to list on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Pearl Global will list as PG1 on the ASX after raising $5 million in new funds.
The company uses heat to separate waste into component parts without the use of chemicals or acids.
“This is done using a special enclosed oven, sealed from the atmosphere,” the company says on its website. “The oven is referred to as a thermal desorption unit, or TDU.”
Waste tyres are shredded and passed through a number of variable zones that precisely measure the temperature, time and motion of the product, to ensure little or no unwanted gases are generated, the company says.
“The sealed oven has a discharge port with multiple air locks from which the carbon and steel products exit. Gases generated by the process are passed through a condenser, where useful hydrocarbons are captured, with the remaining gases passing through a thermal oxidiser to minimise emissions.”
Talking this week with AFR, the company’s chairman, Gary Foster, said Pearl Global’s technology is the first to turn tyres into reusable products without toxic byproducts.
“We have a continuous process and your emissions profile is much lower, because the gas generated for the same volume is at a controlled rate,” Foster was quoted as saying.
“We have not come across anyone who is in this particular space doing what we do.”
Pearl Global says another key advantage of its technology is its portability.
“Pearl’s next generation technology is that it doesn’t require large-scale, complex and expensive plants to operate,” the company says on its site.
“One TDU can fit in a 40-foot iso-frame – the size of a shipping container – and be built, delivered and operating within 16 weeks. Once the TDU arrives on site it can be set up and running within two days, to process one ton of shredded tyres per hour.”