By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
As a next-generation tire recycling facility, Blizzard Energy, Inc. has an interesting beginning. What started as a conversation at a cocktail party, turned into a business opportunity to take a waste product and breaking it down into its recyclable parts.
Dan Shepard, a Systems Analyst for Blizzard Energy, says the company breaks down the tires through heat.
"We are recycling tires by heating them up and breaking them down into their component parts and distributing those," said Shepard.
Tires are shredded and placed
into an airtight container where they are burned without oxygen.
"What we get is it vaporizes the volatiles out of the tires," said Shepard. "When it is condensed, we get a low-grade petroleum oil and natural gas product. When it cools down we have a stainless steel wire and a product called carbon char."
The process of extracting the materials from the tires is called pyrolysis which heats the container to approximately 850 degrees.
The business was
created in 2012 and started ‘cooking’ tires in 2015 in Great Bend. The founders
are based out of California, but Shepard noted it was pretty clear their
recycling plans were not going to play out in “The Golden State.”
"When we talked to California about this idea, they laughed us out of the state," said Shepard. "That is just California and their environmental regulations. We ended up in Kansas because one of the people we were talking to at the cocktail party was based in Kansas and had connections to a tire tipping company."
When the facility near the Great Bend airport is running full bore, it can
recycle 8-10 tons of tires per day. Over a span of a year, that accounts
to approximately one million tires.
Blizzard Energy uses road tires from passenger cars, trucks and occasionally a
light tractor. Shepard says Blizzard does not take tires from the public as
they have a contract with a company that is government approved to pick up old
tires from automotive shops and car dealerships.
Blizzard Energy is now looking for a bigger market for the carbon char or
carbon black material from the pyrolysis. With a couple patents already on the ‘cooking’
process, Blizzard says the carbon char could be used as a soil amendment,
insulating material or a high-efficiency conductor. Shepard says the business
is still sorting out what markets are most interested in the product and most lucrative.
Shepard says once a market is better established for the carbon char, Blizzard Energy will consider expanding with more recycling facilities across the country.
To learn more about Blizzard Energy, visit their website at blizzardenergyinc.com.