SRI’s CEO, Gopinath B. Sekhar was recently interviewed by Tyre Asia Magazine. The February / March issue will be also distributed at the Tire Tech Expo 2011 in Cologne, Germany.

The devulcanizing technology that Sekhar Research Innovations (SRI) has developed, for which it won the 2010 Asia Pacific Technology Innovation Award for Tire Recycling Technology by international consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, is set to change the way end-of-life tyres are perceived and managed. SRI CEO Gopinath B Sekhar says the compound created by his firm’s cleantech process, which uses very little energy, can be utilised to make new tyres, retread old ones and make automotive parts. This will be particularly economically at a time when natural rubber prices have
gone through the roof.

With automobile industry booming in China and India, tyre production in the world’s most populous countries is growing very fast with China already topping the list as the world’s largest producer. Along with this, comes the problem of environment-friendly disposal of end-of-life tyres. In this context, SRI’s tyre recycling is a viable green option for emerging economies.

“India has a long history of recycling which predates the terms of ‘cleantech’ and ‘green’. China in particular has shown a capacity for rapid adoption of all things green, with 1/4 of their energy requirements now being supplied by clean energy,” Sekhar noted.
The need for the recycling of scrap tyres in a responsible and appropriate manner is no longer just a necessity but it is now an imperative, he emphasised.

The already substantial automotive markets of north America and Europe are now being joined and even surpassed by Asia where these industries are on explosive growth. “Existing systems to manage the volumes of scrap generated are going to be outstripped very quickly leaving a path of unacceptable environmental damage in its wake,” he warned. “When I refer to the imperative, I’m not referring to lip service or peripheral low volume applications, but the imperative is for a process that can keep up with the volume of scrap generated.”

Continue reading full article in pdf format.

In 2004, Sekhar Research Innovations (SRI) was founded by local rubber technology legend, the late Tan Sri Dr B.C. Sekhar. When he passed on in 2006, his son, Gopinath B. Sekhar took over the company, focusing on developing a process that enables the reuse of materials from scrap tyres.

The breakthrough for SRI came after five years of endeavour when they successfully created the “SRI compound”. Recycled from tyres and waste rubber, the compound can be used to make new tyres, retread old ones or make automotive parts.

The process of creating the compound begins with cutting and grinding up scrap tyres into crumb rubber. The crumb rubber is then put through the SRI Activation Process to create premium rubber which can be used in a range of products once it is mixed in with the manufacturer’s virgin compound.

Sekhar uses the analogy of cake baking to describe the process: “A scrap tyre is like a baked cake. Eggs, flour, sugar and other ingredients are used to make the cake batter. Once baked, it is impossible to turn the cake back into batter because the properties of the ingredients have changed.

“It is the same in rubber product manufacturing where natural rubber, synthetic rubber, carbon black, chemicals and sulphur are mixed together into a compound. The compound is put in a mould and the mould is heated up for a specified amount of time at a specified temperature to vulcanise it into a finished product. This finished product material cannot be reverted back to the compound it initially was.”

But what if there is a method to convert the cake into batter? This method is what the people at SRI have developed.

Continue reading at TheStar online

..processing an old tire back into a new one remains extremely difficult. The production process alters the materials’ properties, making them hard to reclaim. So far, tire recycling hasn’t been able to produce significant amounts of affordable, high-performance compounds. Sekhar Research Innovations (SRI) is a startup based in the Malaysian city Petaling Jaya. They say their patent-pending technological process can devulcanize rubber from whole scrap tires, creating a compound that can be used to make new tires, retread old ones, and make automotive parts.The technology can work at high volumes and requires very little energy, says SRI.. “Ours is the first closed-loop rubber recycling solution that can match the volume requirements of rubber manufacturing.”

This fall, consulting firm Frost and Sullivan gave the company a technology innovation of the year award for their tire recycling process. “Large-scale implementation of SRI’s recycling technology could ultimately lead to greener, ecofriendly cars on our roads,” the firm stated. Currently the company is in the process of commercializing its process and plans to open a production facility in Malaysia.

Continue reading at Discovery.com

One of the biggest environmental problems plaguing the world is the estimated one billion tyres lying in dumps around the world. The tyres cannot be easily disposed of or recycled and lie in massive dumps — some up to six football fields deep — leaking chemicals into the ground. Some catch fire spectacularly. These fires do not burn out easily. YouTube has videos showing tyre dumps on fire, spewing out thick black smoke and flames. The fires will last for days, the smoke for years. One tyre dumpsite was simmering deep in its bowels, releasing smoke for five incredible years.

“It is a common occurrence,” says Gopi Sekhar, CEO of SRI, who nonetheless believes he has found the solution to the rising mountains of discarded tyres around the world. He and his research team have created a compound which goes into making retread tires. More importantly, a light tyre for trucks, which was made with more than 14% recycled rubber, has been independently validated and tested by the Rubber Research Institute (RRI) of the Malaysian Rubber Board. The RRI noted that the performance of the tyre made by SRI was even better than that of a tyre made of virgin rubber.

An ecstatic Gopi welcomes the RRI validation. “What we have here is nothing less than the solution to the global tyre and rubber scrap problem. It will address not only the annual accumulation [of tyres] but also the backlog in the landfills. The introduction of SRI Compound Masterbatch as an industrial raw material effectively means cost-effective value-added consumption, which will make it irresistible as a green raw material. We believe that this is the future of global rubber recycling,” he says.

The rest of the article can be read at The Edge

Sekhar Research Innovations announces Successful Production of SRI Compound in Full Commercial Scale.

Sekhar Research Innovations has successfully produced and tested the Revolutionary SRI Compound in a full production scale using a conventional Banbury mixer in the World Renowned Malaysian Rubber Board’s, Rubber Research Institute facility in Sg. Buloh http://www.lgm.gov.my/. This is the same facility where final compounds and products produced with our activateSRI Compound

d compound will be immediately sent for independent testing and analysis.

We now have a commercially viable way to consume the tire crumb in large volume. The material will be processed for added value which will reflect in cost savings for consuming manufacturers, while still providing a healthy margin for licensees.

The material will be a raw material compound with specified properties not a processing aid or filler. The compounds that we are working with are of high volume and high value and have requirements in terms of performance parameters that would preclude the addition of recycled material in any volume beyond the minimal.

Our tests have shown that we have processed powdered tire scrap (from truck tires) into performing compound on a commercial scale. Further, our results have shown that we have blended our activated compound into a range of value added product compounds in proportions ranging from 5% to as high as 20% depending on the application, without any appreciable loss of properties. This is a history making event.

The recovery process and our ability to sustain real time conditions on a commercial scale has shown that our technology has enabled us to achieve our goals thus making this process the first of its kind that will have an impact on the rubber market today.

Once our results of SRI Compound have been independently verified, it will lead to demand on an enormous scale. There has never been an alternative performing material like this that can immediately provide manufacturers with substantial savings. Having successfully cleared an array of tests, including abrasion resistance, our current expectations are very high.

An evaluation of the potential of using the buffings from OTR tyres to produce premium compounds. The compound for these specialized tyres are generally of superior properties and although for commercial reasons are currently being used for the production of rubber chips and coloured mulch, we are investigating the potential production of high end, premium compounds allowing for greater returns. Obviously our primary focus is still on the recovery from whole tyre crumbs however the opportunity that presents itself in the current equation may have some very interesting and profitable ramifications.

Overview and Simplified Preliminary Demonstration

Our starting point is the standard production output from a 40 mesh crumb rubber producer. While the “Surface Activation Process” is effective with material ranging from 40 mesh and better all the way to Cryogenic crumb in the 120 to 200 mesh range, we will be carrying out our process trials with standard generic 40 mesh “whole truck” dust. Once activated the highly reactive material is subjected to either a modified reclaim process or any one of the devulcanization technologies currently available. Proprietary processing aids would then be added to the mix and the resultant reactivated compound is then blended with a modified version of the virgin compound used by manufacturers. What you have at this point is a custom compound that has been tailored to whichever product category intended (in this case heavy truck retread compound). This material which is now a thoroughbred raw material, can be added into their process line with no material modification, added process activity or any additional cost factors in the manufacturers operation and most importantly without any appreciable loss in properties. This has never been viably and cost effectively done before, there have been material approximations, mostly in the form of fillers or processing aids masquerading as raw materials, none of which are remotely comparable. This in itself is a significant factor, effectively the SRI Compound would be dropped into the final minute of their normal production mixing cycle in their Banburys or intermixs. The manufacturer would be able to substitute virgin compound with our recycled compound ranging in proportions from 5% to up to 30% subject to the application and the properties required without any appreciable loss in properties allowing them to be environmentally responsible while enhancing their viability. The SRI Compound once fully developed will be a world beating recycling solution, setting a totally new standard for performance and viability.