Tire recycling uses several common terms that are unique to this industry.
Here is a listing with general definitions.
-
Automobile
and light truck tire: By the numbers, these tires make up the vast majority
of tires that need to be recycled in America.
-
Heavy truck
tire: These tires are used on semi trucks and trailers
also known as 18 wheelers. They are usually re-treaded up to five
times before they are disposed of or recycled.
-
Agricultural tire: These oversized tires are used on farm
machinery.
-
Heavy
equipment tire: These tires are huge! They are used
on construction and mining machinery. These tires can be re-treaded
several times.
-
PTE:
Passenger Tire Equivalents - Because there is such a wide range of tire
weights, tire recyclers need a "rule of thumb" to use for estimating
expenses. 20 pounds per tire is a reasonable average weight for auto
and light truck tires and is an unofficial standard. At 20 pounds each
there are 100 tires in a ton. The unofficial average weight for heavy
truck tires is 100 pounds therefore a heavy truck tire is 5 PTE.
-
Crumb
Rubber: Commonly mispronounced as "Chrome Rubber".
When tire rubber is processed or ground down to granular size such as rock
salt, pepper or crumbs it is often called crumb rubber. The CryoVortex
version of this is CryoCrumb (tm).
-
Powdered
Rubber: When tire rubber is processed or ground down to
powder size such as flower or talcum powder it is called rubber powder or
powdered rubber. The CryoVortex (tm) version of this is CryoPowder
(tm).
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Mesh:
This is the industry standard for measuring the size of rubber crumb and
powder. Mesh means holes per linear inch. A 10 x 10 mesh screen
has 100 holes per square inch. A 10 x 30 crumb rubber material will
pass through a 10 mesh screen but not a 30 mesh screen.
-
Cryogenics:
" Cry-o-gen-ics ", often mispronounced as " ki-ro-gen-ics " can be
defined as the use of low temperatures to solve a problem. For the
CryoVortex, cryogenics is the use of liquid nitrogen (-328 F) for freezing
tires to remove
strength and resiliency thus leaving them weak and fragile.
-
Ambient:
The opposite of cryogenic, can mean "room temperature" processing.
Ambient processing does not use low temperatures to pre-cool materials or
grinding equipment. This may lead to many disadvantages in the
production of crumb rubber and often can not produce powdered rubber.
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