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Recycled Tires Could Filter Water
MattSparkes writes "According to New Scientist, water could be cleansed and filtered more easily and cheaply by using old tires. From the article: 'Rubber tires, the kind that lie at the bottom of rivers and at the back of junkyards the world over, could be ideal water filters says an environmental engineer at Penn State University in the US.'"
Here's a picture of the process that Yuefeng Xie set up at PSU.
Note that on his homepage under news he has "A patent "Method of Using Waste Tires As A Filter Media" was issued to me on November 29, 2005. With 40% of royalties to the inventor (other 60% goes to Penn State), I am going to be a rich professor very soon."
Which reveals he applied for this patent on Aug. 26, 1999.
A lot of the material I can find online makes it look as though he's been working on this for six years, he was just waiting for the patent to to be granted. It seems now they just have to verify tha the water that is processed doesn't leach out any harmful toxins or heavy metals (as the article states). A side note is that he only has one other patent aside from this one.
Despite his plans to become rich over this, I hope he is very successful as a lot of countries (both 3rd and 1st world) could stand to benefit from this greatly.
My work here is dung.
do you really want to drink water that tastes like old tire?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
http://www.nova.edu/ocean/tire_reef_washpost.html
I was under the impression that for the last 10-15 years at least they stopped making tires out of rubber. A 10 year old tire is pretty old for a tire.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Forget about Zagat's Michelin food guide, this time Zagat, Chairman Kaga, and Iron Chefs will taste test water filtered by Bridgestone/Firestone, BFGoodrich, Goodyear, generic retreads, and of course, Michelins.
There was a case where someone had the bright idea of dumping tires over a huge area of open sea, to offer marine habitat. Years and years later, the barnacles and coral organisms haven't adopted this habitat, because the tide keeps pushing the tires around, unlike heavier debris. It's an eco-disaster, worse than nothing, essentially.
They're finally getting around to hauling them up, but volunteer effort can only go after a few tires at a time, with tens of thousands or millions of tires to go. Maybe if there was a clear use for all the tires, they could get some funds to lift the old "reef" up and use it for a different, and this time beneficial, marine-related purpose.
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From a billboard in Fight Club(movie):
"You can use recycled motor oil to fertilize your lawn!"
Firestone tires may have a functional use after all!
My first concern is that I am quite allergic to cyclohexylthiophthalimide (CTP) a chemical used in vulcanizing rubber. Yes, I am allergic to car tires. Makes me very, very ill. While I don't get sick in normal traffic I get sick at the drag races from the burnouts and I can't spend more than 30 minutes in a tire shop.
Whether water filtered through tires would bother me or not I don't know but it should be checked into first.
Crumb rubber has found uses in sewage plants as a filler material to bulk up the sewage, replacing the tons of wood chips that would normally have to be discarded. In places with erosion problems burying tires make excellent barriers combined with terracing techniques. There have also been programs to make artificial reefs with tires, making great fish habitats (if done properly that is). I read an article on using the 2" chips as mulch for blueberry plants. Some companies are playing with pyrolysis as well - getting a good deal of oil from the tires by heating them under an oxygen free and high pressure environment.
There's really no limit to what you can do with waste tires. If this method works well I'm sure some countries could benefit, though I don't know how well the filters work. I can't imagine them removing arsenic or bacteria, but possibly they could condition the water so that a better filter could last longer? The article was a little vague on details - anyone provide some insight to this end?
That's *why* we chuck them in the river....
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Soon our oceans will be much cleaner thanks to extra tires!
From the last part of the article (for those who don't RTFA):
I, for one, do not welcome our contaminant-leaching, sewage adsorbing overlords.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
That just totally explains the taste of tap water in Adelaide.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
We use it in Arizona, though not at much as we should, and it's awesome. Even if there weren't the benefits of getting rid of old tires it's still great stuff. It offers a much quieter ride but the real winner is that it deals with thermal expansion real well. The desert has massive temperature deltas, it can be 70 degrees in a day or more, every day. Because of that and the extreme heat, roads wear out fast. However the rubberized asphalt stands up to it quite well.