Tires burn once they reach a temperature of 600 degrees Fahrenheit. T-Phite’s process, called pyrolysis, starts by sending old tires through large furnaces at extreme heat to melt them down into three molecular byproducts — pyrolytic oil, steel, and carbon black.
T-Phite pulls out the carbon black from the “tire waste” because of its superb electrical conductivity and transforms it into a graphitic hard carbon (which it calls T-Phite) which is then used to build electrical pathways (specifically the anodes) needed for energy to flow correctly inside lithium-ion batteries.
Despite the incredible potential to use an existing resource to create something new, this isn’t a new discovery. Back in 2014, a group of scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee discovered that carbon black could be refined from tires and better than other forms of carbon black extracted from other sources.
T-Phite hopes to follow a circular economy business model by using a nearly endless supply of something that is currently considered pure waste and reusing it to simultaneously fill the power needs of the next generation of EV transportation, thus creating a perpetual flow of value and indefinitely extending the life cycle of an unwanted product. And with any luck, it may help lessen the EV battery nightmare facing the United States.
