Australian team creates concrete made from car tyres
15 August 2022 at 3:26 pm
New research shows a cleaner, greener way to create roads and infrastructure.
Engineers at the Royal Melbourne Institute for Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne have created 100 per cent recycled concrete made from recycled car tyres that meets building codes.
About 1.2 billion waste tyres will be disposed of annually worldwide by 2030.
Study co-author and team leader Professor Jie Li said this manufacturing process will unlock environmental and economic benefits.
“As a major portion of typical concrete is coarse aggregate, replacing all of this with used tyre rubber can significantly reduce the consumption of natural resources and also address the major environmental challenge of ‘what to do with used tyres?’,” he said.
Lead author and PhD researcher Mohammad Momeen Ul Islam said the findings debunked a popular theory on what could be achieved with recycled rubber particles in concrete.
“We have demonstrated with our precise casting method that this decades-old perceived limitation on using large amounts of coarse rubber particles in concrete can now be overcome,” Islam said.
“The technique involves using newly designed casting moulds to compress the coarse rubber aggregate in fresh concrete that enhances the building material’s performance.”
