A "Green" Future for Black Pigments

Approximately 14 million tons of carbon black are produced globally each year, largely from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, resulting in 35-40 million tons of CO2 emissions. Approximately 90% of carbon black is used as a reinforcing agent in products such as tires and rubber; the remainder is used as a pigment in plastics, inks, coatings and other applications.

1. Approximately 1-1.5 billion tires worldwide are reaching the end of their service life. Most of these are discarded, buried or burned in places where environmental controls are inadequate or non-existent.
2. This situation presents major environmental challenges, from CO2 emissions and pollution caused by burning these tires to providing wide breeding areas for malaria-carrying mosquitoes that live in water remaining in the tires. Additionally, approximately 4.5 million tons of carbon black contained in these end-of-life tires is wasted. Black Bear has developed revolutionary technology to "recover" carbon black pigments, oil and gas from waste tires in a process that is solid, high-quality and energy-positive. This NEPtune (Net Energy Positive) series is an environmentally friendly substitute carbon black pigment for a wide range of colorization and full-tone applications.

Breaking Industry Standards

Conventional furnace or 'raw' carbon black is produced from fossil fuels by partially combusting crude oil under controlled conditions. This conventional carbon black production method is highly polluting. A new solution to this problem creates a different production process for carbon black by using end-of-life tires as raw material to produce solid, high-quality carbon black. This circular economy approach has a significantly positive environmental impact on the CO2 footprint of black pigments and contributes to the manufacturing of sustainable coatings. The production process effectively removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than it consumes and reduces measured air pollution (e.g. dust, CO2, SO2, NO2, VOCs) by approximately 80%. In addition to recovering and reusing carbon black, the production process generates 1 ton of high-calorific oil per ton of carbon black produced and approximately 2 MWe of green energy. The process produces 40% high-quality carbon black and 60% volatiles; condensable oil (approximately 80%) and non-condensable gas (approximately 20%). The latter is recycled back into the process directly by reusing the energy produced.

The value chain creates a 'cradle-to-cradle life cycle' that will deliver one of the most sustainable solutions for carbon black pigments. Low PAH Content

During the production process, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the raw carbon black material are effectively "cleaned" from the material to a concentration of <5 ppm. Additionally, the final product contains no toxic compounds such as dioxins, furans, PCBs and PCPs. As a result, the NEPtune series is fully compliant with food and human skin contact applications in accordance with EU Commission Regulation 10/2011. With this low PAH content, carbon black pigments are highly suitable for food contact applications such as food packaging inks as well as canned and roll coatings. Other properties can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. Typical properties of NEPtune carbon black

Performance

NEPtune pigments are suitable for mass tone and colorization applications. They provide good color fastness and high color stability at low additive consumption, good flooding and floating prevention behavior and strong agglomeration stability requiring low levels of dispersing additives. Pigments are pre-milled to achieve easy and low energy dispersion characteristics, thus providing high dispersibility. They also exhibit Newtonian viscosity behavior in both aqueous and solvent-based systems while maintaining stability at high pigment loading. More specifically, when NEPtune i120 in a water-based ink is compared with a competing product with an NSA value of 80, comparable results are obtained for CIE L*a*b values.

Table 2. Color performance

Consistent color performance is ensured through rigorous quality control applied at every step of the process. Carefully pre-selected raw materials and fully automatic, advanced production facilities produce high-quality, unique and sustainable pigments that conform to specific specifications. NEPtune products are available both in powder form and in pellet form, which reduces dusting and makes use easier, cleaner and safer. Other performance properties can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3. Various performance results obtained with NEPtune carbon black

Conclusion

The high-quality carbon blacks obtained by Black Bear's innovative technology from end-of-life tires can replace conventional furnace-grade products and be reused in the production of new tires, rubber, plastics, inks and paints. The process solves the waste tire management problem, provides oil savings and contributes to making the world a greener place. Each unit provides more CO2 savings than a million trees can consume (equivalent to 12 times Central Park in New York) and for every ton of carbon black produced, 2.5 tons of oil are saved. Commercial shipments to customers began in early 2017. With sufficient end-of-life tires to build over 1,000 plants, Black Bear plans to expand its innovative environmental solution to the rest of the world. Chris Twigg / Technical Director Responsible / Black Bear Sources 1. http://www.researchandmarkets.com/publication/ mqa8khl/carbon_black_a_global_market; Carbon Black – A Global Market Overview (Jan. 2016); Freedonia World Carbon Black 2013-2018; http://www. lucintel.com/carbon_black_market_2020.aspx. 2. ETRMA End of life Tyre report 2015 (For EU data); RMA 2015 U.S. Scrap Tire Management Summary (For U.S. data); CATRA Study of Potential Scrap Tire Markets in Canada 2012 (for Canada data); JATMA Tyre Industry of Japan 2016 (for Japan data).