Carbon Black
One of the products of RIPP’s patented pyrolysis process is a high quality carbon black, which is commercial grade and has properties similar to globally available carbon blacks. As compared with existing manufacturing methods, our carbon black has a key, distinguishing value-adding feature: it is a sustainable product, created from scrap material. By contrast, traditional processes to manufacture carbon black use scarce commodities – oil and/or gas as feedstock – generating harmful environmental waste and using up valuable resources.
RIPP Carbon Black is a green solution to the problem of used tires. It needs neither oil nor gas as an input, produces no harmful emissions, and is a product which has numerous commercial applications and is readily marketable.
What is Carbon Black?
Carbon black is one of the top industrial chemicals manufactured worldwide. Current worldwide production is about 18 billion pounds per year (8.9 million metric tons).
Carbon black is virtually pure elemental carbon in the form of colloidal particles. It is produced by incomplete combustion or thermal decomposition of gaseous or liquid hydrocarbons under controlled conditions. Its physical appearance is that of a black, finely divided pellet or powder. Its use in tires, rubber and plastic products, printing inks and coatings is related to properties of specific surface area, particle size and structure, conductivity and color. Carbon black also provides high resilience and abrasion resistance for use in rubber products. Depending on particle size, structure, purity and methods of manufacture, carbon black products may be classified as furnace black, lampblack, bone black, acetylene black or thermal black.
Our Carbon Black Product
RIPP’s carbon black product is of a commercial quality, capable of being used in a variety of value-added industrial applications. It can be used in the production of rubber products, including both natural rubber and styrene-butadiene-rubber (SBR). It also has potential applications in the production of other polymeric materials such as ethylene propylene diene monomer rubbers (EPDMs), nitriles, polychloroprene and butyl (rubber used in tires). Moreover, the physical and rheological testing on the compounded RIPP product indicates that it has many additional applications as a filler for products such as: moulded industrial rubber, (tire) retread compounds, conveyer belts, off-the-road compounds, among other materials. There are numerous other applications for our carbon black product. For example, blending RIPP’s char product with other blacks would allow for a variety of high value-added products to be produced.
Test Results Independently Verified
From a physical quality perspective, as a raw material, the RIPP carbon black demonstrates fine particle size distribution similar to high quality commercial grade carbon blacks. Fine particle distribution is highly desirable in carbon black applications as it is the small particle sized product that provides strong structural strength in end-use applications.
The quality of carbon black produced with RIPP's process has been independently verified. The product has been analyzed by two certified independent labs, one at Canadian Rubber Testing and Development Ltd in Fonthill, Ontario and the other at Akron Rubber Development Labs located in Akron, Ohio. Each of the labs tested and compared RIPP Carbon Black with industry standard samples for quality as a raw material and as material compounded in both natural and synthetic rubber. Both labs performed analyses using industry standard methods established by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).
The quality of RIPP’s carbon black in both the raw material form and compounded form was found to be similar to other commercially available carbon black products used in industrial product and tire manufacturing applications.