Technological innovations in used tyres recovery and recycling

In Europe, every year the replacing of motor vehicles tyres produces 140 millions rubbers to be discharged, to which it’s to add 40 millions more rubbers coming from dismantled vehicles. The PFU are constituted from material which has a great energetic content: a notable amount of energy is necessary in order to work the raw materials and to produce a new tyre. Therefore, nowadays it is necessary to promote the materials or energy recovery and the recycling, which would let to reach a meaningful reduction in resource depletion and to decrease environmental and sanitary impacts connected to discharging. Theoretically, the alternatives to be preferred should have the following characteristics: absence of negative effects on the atmosphere, conservation of the natural resources through raw materials recovery and recycling, reduced impact on the existing industries, wide diffusion thanks to a competitive product from the point of view of costs and quality. Mainly, this research wants to offer a short and synthetic view on the modern and most used recycling techniques for materials deriving from PFU treatment, in order to introduce some innovative applications in the field of the civil engineering and of the construction sector in general. In particular, the best techniques for the recovery and the dosage of the material deriving from the blend of asphalt cement and reclaimed tyre rubber will be described; the study provides a characterization of the obtained binder, with particular reference to the behaviour of rubberized asphalt concrete (RAC) in the middle and long period.