September 9, 2025 12:13

Continental, through its group sector ContiTech, has acquired the intellectual property of a patented purification process for pyrolysis oil obtained from the chemical recycling of elastomeric waste.
This includes even complex waste streams such as food-grade hoses or rubber-metal composites containing multiple additives and layered structures.

The purification unit, originally developed by the UK startup LowSulphurFuels, makes it possible to refine pyrolysis oil to industrial quality, enabling its use as a high-value feedstock for the chemical industry. At the same time, ContiTech has commissioned a pilot plant in Germany dedicated to the production of purified pyrolysis oil.

“With this technology, we’re closing a crucial gap in the circular materials economy: We’re able to recover high-quality raw materials from rubber waste, which we can then feed back into the chemical material cycle to create new products without relying on crude oil,” explained Dr. Michael Hofmann, chief technology officer at ContiTech. “We’re thus demonstrating how innovation can become the driving force behind sustainable industrial processes—and how a previously untapped raw material cycle can be made economically viable.”

Compared with plastics, rubber recycling is particularly complex. Once vulcanized, the chemical structure of rubber changes irreversibly, making it impossible to easily separate its original components—rubber, carbon black and additives.

Pyrolysis offers an alternative: Through controlled heating in a low-oxygen environment, the material is thermally decomposed into its base elements. The process yields a high-quality oil similar in composition to crude oil, a gaseous energy source and recovered carbon black from tires and technical rubber products.

Until now, the industrial use of pyrolysis for rubber recycling has been limited due to process complexity and stringent quality requirements for recovered outputs. According to Hofmann, only recent advances in treatment—particularly in the purification of pyrolysis oil—have made industrial-scale applications economically and technically feasible.

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