In Chile, around 6.6 million tires are thrown away every year, according to data provided by the Ministry of the Environment. Of these, only 17% are managed in an environmentally responsible way, while the rest end up in illegal dumps or disappear from the records, creating a serious environmental problem.
With the entry into force of the Extended Producer Responsibility Law (REP Law), however, this situation could change. The law establishes targets for the collection and recovery of end-of-life tires (ELT), promoting their recycling and new uses to prevent their accumulation in public spaces.
In this context, our team is participating in an important initiative that seeks to transform end-of-life tires into useful products. This is the applied research project “NFU-Evolution”, which is funded by Corfo and led by the Centro Tecnológico de Economía Circular (CircularTec) in collaboration with the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (Usach); the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and the Universidad Católica del Norte (UCN), as well as the companies Kal Tire, Arrigoni Ambiental, Rembre and Rubtec.
Rubber recovery
Each institution will play a key role in the research and development of products based on tire waste.
Thus, Usach will focus on exploring the use of granular rubber as a component of concrete for low-income housing, a development that will be led by the Department of Civil Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering and supported by the Office of Technology Management (DGT) of the Office of the Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and Creation (Vriic).
The project will be led by Dr. Leonardo Brescia with the support of Dr. Juan Carlos Pina, both researchers from the Department of Civil Engineering. Regarding the research and its possible use in house building, Dr. Brescia explains that “rubber can provide thermal insulation properties to concrete, which is in line with regulations that seek to reduce thermal transmittance coefficients”.
In addition to its technical benefits, the initiative seeks to generate a positive impact in social, environmental and economic spheres, not only for society but also for different industries.
“Giving rubber a new use means reducing the volume of this accumulating discarded material, which is especially relevant for industries such as mining, which by law must recycle the tires of the vehicles used in the mines, “ adds Dr. Brescia.
Product validation
The research will last 16 months and involves four stages of execution and the joint work of the Materials and Geotechnical Laboratory and the Structures Laboratory, both of which are part of the Department of Civil Engineering.
In the first stage, laboratory tests will be carried out to evaluate rubber-concrete mixtures to determine their strength and thermal properties, with the aim of developing a suitable material for the construction of affordable housing.
Meanwhile, in the second stage, structural and thermal simulations will be carried out, through computer modeling, to validate the viability and temperature properties of houses built with this rubber concrete, considering typical building designs of 60 to 80 square meters.
Subsequently, housing prototypes will be built to empirically verify the results obtained in the laboratory and simulation.
Finally, and based on these results, “all the information will be summarized, design manuals will be created, and the business model will be supported with CircularTec,” emphasizes Dr. Leonardo Brescia.