An environmentally attractive method to recycle scrap rubber crawler tracks from excavators and similar agricultural and military vehicles.
The Recyclatrack process uses ultra high pressure (UHP) waterjets at 50,000 psi operating pressure, in which the company specialises, to separate the rubber in a crawler track from the steel skeleton. The rubber is recovered as a granulate and powder with a variety of markets and the steel is high quality scrap.
Previously neither rubber nor scrap metal markets were interested in these tracks and about 50,000 tracks are discarded annually in the UK and over 2m globally.
Tracks can now be sustainably and entirely reprocessed fulfilling a ‘cradle to cradle’ cycle which has now drawn the attention of major track manufacturers and distributors who are coming under increasing pressure from clients to address the end of life outcome for such tracks. No chemicals or incineration is involved in the process – only low volumes of fresh water which is almost entirely recycled.
A pilot plant is operational in Suffolk on an Environment Agency licensed Waste Transfer
Facility which is actively demonstrating that a sustainable ‘cradle to cradle’ end of life
outcome has been achieved for a previously un-processable waste stream.