// Site visit
Touring GDT’s Warren plant
By Jacqueline Ong
ON a chilly May morning, this journalist
made her way through the picturesque
Dubbo to Warren in regional NSW to meet
up with Green Distillation Technologies
(GDT) chief operating officer Trevor
Bayley and technical director and brains
behind the Destructive Distillation
technology Denis Randall.
Bayley and Randall had kindly agreed
to take Ian Robinson, who runs the SAbased The Tyre Collectors, and I on a
tour of GDT’s Warren plant.
GDT has been operating the Warren
pilot plant since 2009 and plans to
upgrade the facility to full production,
which would allow it to process 19,000
tonnes of end-of-life tyres a year.
Using its Destructive Distillation
technology, which Bayley said is
different from pyrolysis, GDT turns
waste tyres into saleable commodities
of oil, carbon, and steel.
There are some in the sector who are
doubtful that GDT’s technology works
and question its ability to scale up the
plant to full production, which made
the trip all the more interesting.
Walking through the plant Bayley
showed the group where the nitrogen,
which GDT produced on its own, was
being manufactured.
“The key difference between pyrolysis
and Destructive Distillation is that
nitrogen is used throughout our process.
Essentially, we squeeze air from the
atmosphere through a membrane, and
it takes everything else out and leaves
the nitrogen. The oxygen gets vented,”
Bayley said.
“The temperature used in our process
is also nowhere near pyrolysis. Reaction
takes place at 360 degrees Celsius. Low
temperature pyrolysis is 450 degrees
Celsius and high temperature is close
to 1000 degrees Celsius.”
Additionally, no vapour is collected
during the process and GDT does not
produce any gas. The only output,
according to Bayley, is oil, which he
later proceeded to show us, even
suggesting we dip our fingers in it (no
one did).
Pointing out the unit, which had two
tubes that could hold eight whole truck
Inventor of GDT’s technology Denis
Randall surveys the Warren plant.
(Credit: David McArthur)
tyres each, Bayley said the distillation
process took about an hour. Once
processed, a water bath cools the carbon
and steel down to 150 degrees Celsius.
There is some residual waste, which
Bayley said the company had started
processing to see if they could turn
that into some kind of resource.
When asked about the sulphur
content in the oil, Bayley insisted
that this was under 2% in the carbon
and less than 1% in the oil. Such low
figures, he said, was a result of a nonconventional distillation process.
As a pilot plant, it appeared that the
process seemed to work and Bayley said
he was confident it could be scaled up.
So confident is GDT that the company
is proceeding with the installation of
four more modules.
However, Bayley acknowledged that
the company had hit a bit of a speed
bump because the plant now needed an
EPA licence to operate as an energy from
waste facility. While Bayley questioned
why this was necessary, saying the
plant is not an EfW facility, he said the
company is on it. He added that GDT
is keen to continue to progress the
technology, work, which could go on
beyond their lifetimes and had hired
a young gun to help with refining the
process, saying there is certainly a future
iw
in GDT’s technology.
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AUGUST 2016 INSIDEWASTE
39