Sustainability solutions company GCX Africa reports that it has completed the design and registration of a new carbon project methodology for tyre recycling, following the completion of a rigorous validation and verification process.

After working on the project for over a year, it was appro-ved in September 2013 at the seventy-fifth meeting of the executive board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations (UN) in Bonn, Germany.

GCX Africa lead strategist Kevin James tells Engineering News that South Africa faces a massive challenge in dealing with about 60-million existing waste tyres, which have been illegally dumped at landfill sites, in addition to about 11-million waste tyres that will be added to this total every year.

“The common practice of burning waste tyres releases toxic fumes and liquids, causing serious negative health and environmental effects,” he points out.

James says the new methodology enables companies to claim carbon credits from a proprietary process that turns tyre waste into low-carbon energy.

“Using this process, 40 000 t of rubber will generate 126 000 MW/h of electricity and save more than 22 600 t of carbon dioxide (CO₂),” he states.

Low- and zero-carbon company ECO² Partnership SA CEO Jeanne Rose says the CDM method of carbon accreditation prescribes the conditions and assumptions the company’s continuous reductive distillation (CRD) technology needs to adhere to claim carbon credits.
It also prescribes the parameters to be monitored and how the emission reductions are to be calculated, she adds.

“If ECO²’s Alembic CRD technology and GCX Africa’s carbon project method were employed in a project dealing specifically with waste tyres, about 22 600 carbon credits would be generated if processing is undertaken at a capacity of 120 t of tyres a day, or 39 900 t of tyres a year,” states Rose, who adds that the carbon credits can be traded on the international market.

She notes that electricity produced from tyre waste using the CRD technology will be significantly cleaner than the electricity produced by the South African grid, measuring about 0.8 t of CO₂/MW/h, compared with the 0.96 t of CO₂/MW/h for the South African grid, which is predominantly coal-powered.

“If the waste feedstock for the project is biomass, for example, agricultural waste or organic solid waste such food or garden waste, then the emissions from the project will be close to zero, as certain biomass is considered a renewable resource; emissions from these sources are considered to be zero. Using electri-city from such a plant means that relatively less electricity from the grid will be needed. “The associated reduced emissions from this replaced electricity will be claimable under the carbon standards,” explains Rose.

James explains that ECO², which focuses on green renewable-energy solutions, approached GCX Africa to assist it in generating carbon credits from projects that use ECO²’s Alembic CRD technology.