UK tire pyrolysis company Big Atom awarded €415k grant

London – UK tire recycler company Big Atom has been awarded a £350,000 (€415,000) grant to advance its pyrolysis technology. 

Founded in 2017 in London, Big Atom has been operating an end-of-life tire (ELT) pyrolysis facility in Ellesmere Port since early 2018.

The grant, awarded by Innovate UK, will go towards improving temperature control and efficiencies at the plant, which has the capacity to process up to 25,000 tonnes of waste tires a year, said company founder Alexander Guslisty 16 Nov. 

“It is a huge breakthrough and will open up new opportunities that will accelerate our IP and pathway to commercialisation,” said the company official. 

Claimed to be the second biggest tire recycling plant in north-west UK, the Big Atom’s Ellesmere Port site includes a mechanical processing unit where it separates tires into rubber & steel products.

A tire pyrolysis plant then converts waste rubber into pyrolysis oil, gas, and recovered carbon black.

With the cash injection, Guslisty said, Big Atom will be able to generate “higher yields of valuable products compared to existing reactors.”

The funding follows the company's 2020 upgrade of its processing line, which it said enabled the production of "higher quality rubber and steel products."