Used tire plant funding approved
Mike Hasten • mhasten@gannett.com • December 17, 2010
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Buzz up!Twitter FarkIt Type Size A A A BATON ROUGE — Steps taken Thursday put a planned waste tire processing facility at the Port of Alexandria in line for state assistance.
The Joint House-Senate Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee Thursday approved adding the port's Waste Tire Thermal Conversion Facility to the statewide Port Priority Program. It's the fifth project on the list in line for funding from a portion of the state's fuel taxes, so it could be three years before state money is provided.
But that's not slowing the project, Port of Alexandria Executive Director John Marzullo said.
"We'll advertise to get private funding" to "get the project under way as fast as possible," he said. When the state funds arrive, they'll be used to pay off the private loan.
The state is agreeing to put up $7.7 million for site improvements and construction and the Port of Alexandria $1.6 million, including 10 percent of the construction, engineering and related services. Clean Tech Solutions, the company operating the plan, provides the equipment valued at $12 million.
Floyd Ward II, son of the CEO of CTS, said he expects construction to start before the end of this year and "we'll fire it up early in the third quarter of next year."
The equipment to process tires is scheduled to arrive from China in mid-January.
The facility will utilize chipped tires from a Cottonport chipping plant CTS recently purchased and from other Louisiana-based tire chippers, Ward said.
Unlike other recycling plants that burn tires, the plant will use new technology that emits little pollution.
"We apply heat in an oxygen-free environment," he said, "so instead of combustion, you get decomposition."
"It does in 8 hours what Mother Nature takes 100 years to do," Marzullo said.
Ward said "It's like unbaking a cake. You get flour, eggs and oil."
Tires break down into their original ingredients, recovering 30 percent carbon, 50 percent oil and 10 percent steel from steel-belted radials.
The remaining 10 percent of the product is gas that is captured and then piped back in to fuel what is essentially an oven.
Ward said the process generating its own fuel is one of the things that makes it so efficient. The oil, carbon and steel are to be sold.
Louisiana generates nine million waste tires a year, figures provided to the committee show. The CTS facility is expected to handle three million tires a year, yielding 42,000 tons of stock at a processing cost of $5.3 million.
The paperwork predicts 25 construction jobs and 40 to 50 full-time jobs once production starts.
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