European Tyre Recycling Conference selects keynote

Brussels – Hermann Erdmann, head of the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa, will serve as the keynote speaker at the 22nd annual European Tyre Recycling Conference, to be held 25-27 March in Brussels.

REDISA is a non-profit organisation whose goal is to develop a sustainable South African tire recycling industry through an Integrated Industry Waste Tire Management Plan.

Erdmann will outline the government backed third way of managing tire and rubber waste: A model well-suited to developing markets in Africa but with key lessons for the European markets such as developing new processes, lessons in managing collections and in using technology to run a modern business model in a low-tech environment.

Sara Gobbi, director of European Affairs of ASTM International, also will speak. She will talk about the progress made by the D24 committee on recycled Carbon Black toward creating a set of standards for the pyrolysis char from end of life tires.

Another focus of the conference will be the progress of rubberised asphalt. A panel on the topic will include Serji Amirkhanian, professor of civil engineering at the University of Alabama who has written more than 250 papers.

Other speakers include Fernando Moreno-Navarro, an associate professor in materials science, Department of Construction Engineering and Construction Projects, University of Granada, and Davide Lo Presti, a senior scientist and international research project manager involved in five rubber related civil engineering research projects at the University of Nottingham.