Making Crude Oil From Tires

brokeninside writes: "According to this story at allAfrica.com British researchers have found a way to turn scrap old automobile tires into crude oil that is the similiar to "North Sea Brent crude." Needless to say, this could have a profound effect on gas prices should the technology be commercially viable. According to the article, the company Coalite plans to have commercial production of crude from tires by April 2001."

Comments

Re:Arithmetic error here

[Mad Hughagi]

Coalite plans to produce up to 35 million litres of oil a year

While it may not solve the oil crisis, it is sufficient to supplement a very desirable commodity. You also have to remember that there are dumps full of old tires that do nothing but take up space - they don't decompose and they aren't worth anything to anyone (unless you like making tire-swings). If anything at least this will free up some landfill space and since many of these tire dumps are unsafe (if they catch on fire you're talking about quite a deadly soup of toxic smoke - it happens!) it's probably a good thing that we get rid of them.

While I think that we should be moving away from fossil fuels, there is no doubt that almost every country on the planet will try to squeeze out every last drop of oil that they can, reusing these tires is just a step in process. Don't be surprised to find a lot of this 'recycling' in the years to come as we quickly work our way down to the bottom of our oil wells - rising oil prices only help to accelerate projects which might currently be deemed uneconomic.