Africa's Growing Vehicle Ownership: Broad Prospects for Scrap Tire Pyrolysis Applications

Africa’s rapidly growing vehicle fleet has generated a large volume of scrap tires. For example, South Africa adds 11 million scrap tires each year; in Kenya, only a small share of scrap tires is simply retreaded and used, while most are randomly stockpiled or illegally burned; Ghana generates about 150,000 tons of scrap tires annually.

These wastes take 100 years or even longer to degrade naturally. In the past, Africa mainly handled scrap tires through landfill and open stockpiling, incineration, and low-value utilization; innovation in tire recycling and scientific utilization have therefore become important environmental issues.

In recent years, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and other countries have successively introduced policies to restrict illegal dumping and burning of scrap tires and encourage investment in resource utilization projects. Kenya has also issued the National Energy Compact 2025–2030 and extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations. Meanwhile, Tanzania, Guinea, and other countries have introduced regulations banning primitive oil refining and mandating compliant resource recovery treatment. Against this background, tire pyrolysis equipment has been promoted and applied in Africa in recent years, becoming the most promising solution for scrap tire treatment and high-value applications.

In Asia, Europe, North America, and other regions, scrap tire pyrolysis technology has been widely applied. In the EU, for example, rules such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and extended producer responsibility systems have been implemented, turning “sustainable recycled materials” from a concept into a hard requirement. Tire manufacturers have begun to be willing to pay a premium for low-carbon materials such as recovered carbon black and recovered oil, opening market space for high-value applications of pyrolysis products. Represented by industry leader Niutech, its scrap tire pyrolysis technology and equipment have been industrialized in multiple countries, becoming one of the mainstream methods of scrap tire treatment.

Scrap tire pyrolysis technology, through high-temperature decomposition in an oxygen-free environment, returns the polymers in tires to a small-molecule state and produces high value-added pyrolysis products such as recovered oil, recovered carbon black, and steel wire. It is called the “ultimate method” for scrap tire treatment.

Niutech’s independently developed industrial continuous low-temperature pyrolysis resource utilization complete technology and equipment for scrap tires won the National Science and Technology Progress Award. The production line truly achieves continuous feeding, continuous oil output, and continuous discharge of solid products, thoroughly solving the worldwide problem of pyrolysis coking, greatly improving industrial production efficiency, and ensuring safe and stable operation throughout the process.

The complete production line covers more than 100 patented technologies and is equipped with a fully automated intelligent control system that conducts real-time monitoring of nearly 20,000 control points of equipment and processes, with functions such as data acquisition, calculation, recording, automatic correction, and safety warnings.

This proven technical solution has now been implemented in dozens of countries, including Germany, South Korea, Brazil, Hungary, Thailand, and India. The successful delivery of the project in Germany marks that its equipment has met the stringent environmental requirements of the EU and Germany.

With the growth of Africa’s vehicle fleet and the increase in scrap tire generation, combined with increasingly stringent environmental requirements, the promotion and application prospects of scrap tire pyrolysis technology are broad. Scrap tire pyrolysis technology has brought about a shift in values: tires are no longer regarded as waste to be disposed of, but as resources awaiting reuse. From scrap tires to recovered oil, this well-developed waste-to-energy system gives scrap tires a second life...