Cryogenic tire recycling system
OwnerEssa T. Azarinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The raw material in used tire carcasses is reclaimed by cutting the tire into quarter segments and freezing the segments with liquid nitrogen in a controlled environment freezing chamber. Rotary air locks pass material to and from the chamber. Steel and fiber materials are removed in a stripping chamber where the frozen rubber both broken into smaller chunks. A robot arm with magnets and hooked fingers removes the fiber and steel. The rubber chunks are then pressed through dies to reduce the size to a uniform rubber crumb. The press consists of multiple pointed fingers in registration with multiple sized holes in a screen type die. The rubber crumb is removed with a suction device and dried using heat from a closed loop nitrogen cycle on the way to collection containers.
Claims10
An apparatus for reclaiming the rubber, fiber, and steel materials of a discarded tire carcass comprising;
- means for cutting the tire carcass into a number of segments of equal volume;
- means for freezing said segments to the point of embrittlement;
- a robot arm capable of rotation, translation, and reciprocation;
- a head on said robot arm for fracturing the rubber in said embrittled tire segments to produce said fractured rubber particles;
- means for separating the fiber and steel from said rubber particles in said composite;
- press means for sizing said rubber particles to a uniform size;
- and
- suction means for transporting said uniform size particles to containers.
An apparatus for reclaiming the rubber, fiber, and steel materials of a discarded tire carcass comprising;
- means for cutting the tire carcass into a number of segments of equal volume;
- means for freezing said segments to the point of embrittlement, said means for freezing comprising;
- multiple liquid nitrogen spray nozzles for spraying the tire carcasses;
- multiple nitrogen recovery nozzles for recovering the nitrogen;
- and
- means for resupplying said spray nozzles with the nitrogen recovered by said recovery nozzles;
- a sealed freezing chamber totally enclosing said spray nozzles, said recovery nozzles, and a tire carcass segment;
- first rotary air lock means for inserting a tire carcass segment into said freezing chamber;
- and
- second rotary air lock means for removing a tire carcass segment from said freezing chamber;
- wherein said first and said second air lock means allow insertion and removal of tire carcass segments while preventing communication of said freezing chamber with the surrounding atmosphere
- means for fracturing said embrittled segments to create a composite of rubber particles, fiber, and steel;
- means for separating the fiber and steel from said rubber particles in said composite;
- press means for sizing said rubber particles to a uniform size;
- and
- suction means for transporting said uniform size particles to containers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.