Tire Recycling

the County of San Bernardino California is proud to support this program and encourages everyone to recycle reduce and reuse every day I've got a question what would we do without tires obviously they're on every vehicle on the road so there are a lot of them more importantly how do we get rid of them so I'm curious what would we do without tires hi there I'm Joel Green and welcome to curiosity quest goes green the show that explores what you're curious about well today our quest setter comes to us from Toby in the OC and he wrote dear Jule my teacher says you're not supposed to throw tires in the trash so I'm curious how do you get rid of them well Toby you can recycle tires and we're out at the Mitsubishi Cement Corp in Southern California we're gonna learn one way that they do this so let's begin today's curiosity class all right so we've made our way up the snow into the mountains where I am with David rib from Mitsubishi to make or patio David lorring Joel good morning thanks for having us out here today appreciate it glad to do it how to submit and recycling tires blender there's a lot of steps in manufacturing cement and using tires is kind of the end of the story so if you hold on a while let me get to that so you're asking me to be patient is what you're asking me to do I know it's tough alright so where do we start then we're starting in the quarry in order to make cement you need a lot of raw materials our production is nearly two million tons of cement per year so we have to take out of the ground about two and a half million tons of limestone to work with and that's why we're here in the quarry where we have lots of limestone to take out of these hills what is a quarry like some horse runs through something in the engine of a truck we're mining from the side of a mountain mm-hmm and we're pulling rock off of the sides not too deep but off the face of the mountain where there were deposits natural deposits of limestone that limestone was laid down millions of years ago when it was at the bottom of a sea bed tiny creatures dropped their shells layer upon layer hundreds of feet thick and that formed the limestone then that seabed had to be raised up into a mountain range by geologic movement and now is along this mountain ridge and it's a very rich deposit and there are several companies mining the limestone here this quarry has been open since the 1940s and was originally a Kaiser steel limestone source and then Kaiser opened a cement plant and Mitsubishi bought it in 1988 concrete is the second most widely consumed substance on earth the primary raw material in cement manufacture is limestone we also need some silica which is just like sand on the beach it just so happens that we have two grades of limestone that we're mining here one is very high in calcium carbonate which is limestone and another which is more gray that has a lot of silica in it so we mined the high grade limestone and the mid grade limestone and then we get the limestone and the silica that we need to start the manufacturing process it's like a big ladder on the side of the hills is that how you mine that's right it's called a bench mine so we're not burrowing underground we're making benches that are about 40 or 50 feet high and about the same depth we have to blast the rock out of those benches it doesn't just fall off of there and you can't just scrape it out so we put explosives in holes and blast them out of there now we don't want to blast the rock into the sky we don't want it flying all over the place all we're trying to do is fracture and collapse the rock into big piles then we can scoop it up with a loader put it into a big truck and bring it over to our crusher and into the manufacturing facility right now we blasting today we probably have already blasted today most days we are blasting for five days a week so tell us David what happens to the hills when you're done mining them well we pulled the limestone off from the side of the hills and so it doesn't look like the background and it doesn't have the plants that the animals and the vegetation there likes to live in we've got to put it back together there are requirements to revegetate or restore the habitat we go a step further to really completely restore everything that we found it out I said ah David this is where the tires come in right oh we have several steps to go before we get to the tires let's get going David you ever feel small in the world sometimes when I'm looking up with the sky and sometimes looking up these trucks this is a hundred ton haul truck and when I say a hundred tons the vehicle weighs about a hundred tons and it holds about a hundred tons so when it's coming fully loaded down the hill you got about two hundred tons and that's why they get the right-of-way it's a little harder to stop them than it is normal vehicles so you need a lot of training before you can drive a mosby you should have seen the look on his face like you serious Joe I did what is this big other machine over here that's a mobile drill rig and that's how we drill the holes for blasting we get an area that we know we like like the limestone and we drill about a dozen holes six inches wide about 50 feet deep Wow then we'll put a blasting cap at the bottom of the hole fill the rest of it up with an explosive mixture and the last 10 feet with dirt to keep it all contained all of it is detonation cord coordinated so it all goes off at once so now we're ready to learn about the tires right I've got a few steps to go so let's go look at how the rest of it comes together all right let's go fun fact chug chug it takes seven gallons of crude oil to produce one car tire the david i see what you use the tires for now no that's just a small pile of lights and there's only a few tires there we use a lot more tires in the process we'll get to it there's a few steps to go now we have two piles now one of each grade and we take feed from the bottom of the pile that's why it looks like that one's caved in a bit because we're taking feet off the bottom the pile off and sending it through a third crusher where it crushes it down to under one inch side and then we're going to mix them in the big dome that you see in the background there yeah I was wondering what's in that dome tell me something big rock to the dough that's where we mix the two and make sure we have just the right formula for our raw materials as the show goes on I'm feeling smaller and smaller sorry David I'm sorry we're in the dome yes this is the pre blend dome so what is this you said a pre blend oh we're blending the two kinds of limestone that we've mined in the quarry they're coming in the upper conveyer and being stacked on this pile with the radial stacker just behind me that pile moves towards us here all the way around the building so we get into the tires yet at all we're getting there we're getting there yep I'm a bit early so where are we heading next next we'll go to the head though I'm part of the process the pre feeding tower the preheating tower that's where all the raw materials are heated up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and that's where the tires come in can we go yes let's get there let's go said that the heaps have to kill him huh what are we gonna get there the killer we're almost to the kiln but we're at the tires now hey we finally made it goodness there's a lot of fires here okay first question where do you get all these tires from they come from all over Southern California the state of California generates about 50 million waste tires each year we use about two million tires per year so there's plenty of tires they come from everywhere that people get new tires and places that people leave old tires and we have a company that brings all those tires to us and then we can use them and we also get them from community cleanups if there's tires laying out in the desert now will you get them from landfills at all that's right when people bring tires to landfills they don't want to bury them there and so they do divert the tires off to reuses recycling and usage like here at the cement plant can I ask now what are you doing with all these tires we're using them as fuel and raw material nothing goes to waste in these tires we drop them into the hot process all the rubber is immediately burned off and that adds to the heat that we need in the process and then the steel belts drop right into the kiln and are added to the ROM that's so we don't have to put in quite as much finally you use the entire tire we use everything about it there is no ash leftover so that's my next question is a beautiful day and I would be able to see if there's any black smoke coming out of here so that's my thought is when you burn a tire black smoke is flying out right it's so hot in the kiln that nothing survives it there's no black smoke coming off of those tires and you can see that looking at our exhaust right over there all you see is blue sky goes that is exhaust coming out now it doesn't matter what size tire you use because I seem like obviously we have some small tires here and then you have this big tire right there can you use any size tire it just it has to fit through the opening that goes into our kiln feed plate the tire you see here is just about as big as we can fit nothing bigger than that so everything from the passenger tires up to the 18-wheeler truck tires we can use how many tires will you use in a day cuz this is a lot this is about a four or five day supply we typically use about four or five thousand tires a day so a pile like this probably about twenty thousand tires how often will you have truckloads come in they come in most days several times a day and they unload them on the ground and then you saw our loader scooping them up and shaping the file and keeping it in shape now he's just doing that to keep it moving and keep new stuff coming in right he's shaping the pile and he's also taking bucket loads into the hopper where then it's fed onto the conveyor belt so now we gonna go see the hopper and see how they're going in that's our next stop now we're not going to get burned all right we'll be able to see them going in the gate that's as far as we can see because there's probably a little too hot in there right right all right let's go check it out all right David water and these gasps these are all mill balls these are the hardened steel balls that are in the raw mill and in the finish mills and they roll around inside the big mill container the big steel cylinder that rolls around with these balls in there and it grinds up first the raw materials in the raw mill and the finished product from clinker down to cement powder now as they roll around they also wear down a little bit and so they started about three inches a little bit bigger than this but then they wear down to this size so the ones that are this size we put back in the mill the ones that are this size we send back to the manufacturer so they can recycle them that's right this is the last stop for oh they come along this conveyor their wave and they go into the outer trap the door closes and the inner door opens and it drops into the feed place after they inner door opens then they'll burst into flame immediately they'll be all burned up and within that's all it takes what is clinker clankers something you put on poles like tire holes something that makes noise down the trash truck makes sounds like something my car makes when it's going bad substance a free car means a lot I don't know what do you think it it was the sound like oh yeah it sounds like blinker maybe something in the front of your car blinker are little balls of cement then we then have to grind up into cement powder the control room to see how all this comes together before we go over to the control room I wanted to give you a better look at the kiln that's really the heart of this that's where he get to the hot temperature it requires to turn the raw materials into cement there's this kill its 250 feet long and has an inside diameter of 16 feet and it has of refractory brick that contains that very hot process inside or the clicker is being made correct all it does is it rolls down there it's at a slight angle and the material just keep pushing in and rolling around and that mixes it and closes it to a high enough temperature to make the chemical change what in the world am I looking at here lots of displays of what's going on in the plant there's a lot going on and the production supervisors have a lot to pay attention to to keep everything running smoothly there's dozens of different screens but we're looking at the screen that shows the main activity through the preheater tower that we were just in and the kiln this part right here you said this is where we just came from yeah we're looking at a picture that shows the preheater and kiln system so this area in here that I'm circling is where we were in the tower it's a series of vessels where our raw material is contacted with hot air and that heats it each one of these vessels that we were next to in the tower looks like this vessel here both the hot gases and the raw materials enter in the side swirl around inside the hot gases exit the top to go to the next station the next level and the materials are heated up some and drop down to the next one and as the materials drop through they're heating all the way up to about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit we do that by burning coal in two places one is here near the bottom of the tower and the hot gases are circulating back through here at the other side or the nose of the kiln we also are burning coal here to heat the kiln up to 2800 degrees Fahrenheit so that we can make that chemical transformation the tires as we saw are dropping right in here at the bottom of the tower right on the feed plate going into the kiln so they get a chance to burn up here and add to the energy going up in the preheater Tower and the steel belts are dropping in with the raw materials right at the beginning of the kiln and now and I see like on some of these drop in right yes flame yes we have two cameras looking at high-temperature locations the one on the left here is actually the coal flame at the nose of the kiln so we're watching to make sure that that looks like a nice uniform flame and on the right is looking at the hot clinker dropping into the clinker cooler so it's very hot dropping out of the kiln at 2,800 degrees into the first stage of cooling in fact when back in 2001 38 states banned the landfilling of whole tires and 11 states banned all scrap tires from landfills we started these three big silos behind us each one of them holds about 40,000 tons of cement clinker that sounds like a lot it is alive each so between the three of them it's 120,000 tons of clinker storage no it's still little little rocks here we call them for storage and bring them to the finish Mills where we grind them up into a fine powder which is the cement in the Finnish Mills hardened steel balls hardens beautiful big so big it goes in from the conveyors on the top drops in and then we extract it from reclaimed conveyors on the bottom now I wouldn't want to be inside why cause it's full of clinker okay from the ground up yeah it's full just like a water bottle it's clinker but a clinker bottom what are these big pokey turning things those are our finish mills and that's where I was saying the clinker is ground into a fine powder which is the cement product so it goes in as clinker rocks and it rolls around with those hardened steel balls hold and get that that's right there inside and it grinds up the clinker balls into a very fine powder we also add some gypsum which is calcium sulfate and that allows it a little time before the concrete will set up and be hard is time to work with it so how many of those those balls are in there busting up the rocks thousands this is pretty big how come they went makes over a hundred tons per hour there's a lot of powder moving through their stuff okay so 100 tons bar that beat trust that and one load is 100 tons right the raw product or the raw limestone yes and this thing can make 100 tons of cement in and out in an hour Wow I can't really hear well it's pretty thick plating okay so you wouldn't hear inside Wi-Fi is your coke be on the outside those are big bolts that hold the place in place okay you wouldn't want to be raked across the tri-state how many of those do you have here there are four finish mills in our site well I guess what do you call the mixing process that's finish milk finished just ground down to submit what happens to all it gets air conveyed to the product silos and then it's ready to go out in trucks and train loads right now I'm curious what is the difference between cement and concrete ones made out of sand and ones made out of something else concrete would be used to possibly build buildings cement is what we would be walking or driving or using something to stick like rocks together I don't think there is a difference because you can walk on both and you have to plan it in with all the mixtures concrete is more bumpy concrete is a bit harder than cement concrete you ride your skateboard on okay I do that on Summit see man yeah is there a difference no concrete it has a rocks in it and cement does not the cement has water well this is cement and it has the chemical energy kind of baked into it that allows it to bond with the other constituents you mix that with gravel and sand and water and then the chemical change happens where it releases its energy to reform all the bonds and glue everything together tightly and come up with concrete strong concrete so you can't make concrete without a vent or without some that exactly without cement all you have is wet Sam what's and you know it's funny because I don't feel any of the rubber from the tires in here I don't feel any of the steel belts and the tires in here so it's all burned up and part of this is created by using recycled tires that's right it's all chemically changed and then ground to a fine powder fun facts bunch backs unpack scrap tires often work their way back up to the surface of landfills after burial I did one things want to ask you was how can the community get involved when it comes to recycling tires most communities have community cleanup days where you can bring your tires to a central point and they can be then forwarded by the community to an appropriate recycling facility so check with your local communities in order to find out when and where this goes on right all right and who knows your tire may become your driveway right that's right or a part of your driveway the glue to your driveway no that puts the company holds the concrete together well David thank you very much this has been very educational it's been a lot of fun Joel appreciate it fun fact fun fact each year motorists in the US generate about one scrap tire for every man woman and child in the country I want to thank David and everyone out here the Mitsubishi cement corporation for teaching us how they recycle tires and Toby thanks for keeping us rolling on curiosity quest now if you'd like to send us on an eco-friendly quest go to KBC org click on the curiosity quest link and simply tell me what you're curious about and your ideas could be our next quest and remember this is our planet and it's our responsibility to take care of it so I'm curious have you gone green I'm Joel Green and I'll see you next time yeah David that's my life that's a wrap

Channel: Chula Vista Clean & Green

Views: 1,379,649

Rating: 3.7565637 out of 5

Keywords: Tire Recycling, Tire (Industry), Recycling (Industry), go green, going green, curiosity quest, joel greene

Id: _EChTbYhJ_M

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 18 2015