21 October 2020

New rubber bitumen plant for recycling tyre waste

Work has been completed on MOL’s Zala Site, Hungary, enabling the production of 20,000 tons of rubber bitumen annually.

© Robert Laursoo/unsplash

The site will recycle 8-10% of Hungarian domestic tyre waste, making about 96 tons of rubber bitumen per day. Annually this translates into 20,000 tons of raw material for road construction.

The company says that rubber bitumen has advantages to the road user over use of recycled material, as the adhesion of the rubber bitumen to minerals reduces the chances of pot-holes forming and its higher load capacity results in a lower likelihood of ruts, traffic noise may also be reduced.

The process of obtaining rubber grit from bitumen and waste tires was developed by MOL with Pannon University and patented in 2009. Further refinements led the partners to chemically stabilised rubber bitumen.