This is the problem that Lehigh Technologies is trying to solve.
I think everybody in this room has been exposed at one time or another
to one of the issues that’s shown on this slide.
And I think everybody recognizes the huge environmental problem
that waste tires can provide to our planet.
The scale of the problem is shown on this slide,
300 million waste tires per year just in the United States.
That’s one for every man, woman, and child in the population
and enough to go around the earth multiple times.
In addition to the developed world, you have a whole growing problem in the RDEs
where their mobility is leading to a huge problem already with tire waste.
Now, the industry, aside from burning a lot of the tires for fill value,
has developed some low value applications like in-fill
for these synthetic sports fields or mulch,
hardly good uses for a very highly engineered well-developed polymer.
This is what Lehigh does with that waste tire material.
We freeze it with liquid nitrogen to attempt to a 196 centigrade minus
and we put it through one of six proprietary turbo mills
that is spinning at 2200 revs per minutes.
And with this jet engine with teeth,
we can produce 50 kilotons of micron scale rubber powder
with this type of distribution
all the way down at levels that have never been seen before in industrial uses
compared to, as I mentioned,
the large particles that are produced for things like sports fields or mulch.
That’s what’s different about what we do.
Our value proposition is threefold.
It begins with sustainability, a better use for that waste tire material
We drive performance incorporating the intrinsic properties of rubber
in the formulations that we moderate
and we almost always provide cost savings for the people that use it
to replace virgin raw materials.
Now, some applications, we have a close... system
with many of our tire company customers where their waste comes to us
and is delivered back to them as rubber powder
for incorporation into the tread and the sidewall.
Continuing on the theme of mobility, we’re not in this car. I wish we were.
But we’re working on many automotive applications, under the hood applications
where the heat resistance of the rubber modified plastics
provides additional safety and cost reduction
and the wheel well liners where we get improved gravel resistance, some flexibility,
and many other applications in that car.
Now, in roads the use of rubber has been known for a long time
, noise reduction, flexibility, and durability.
We found that with smaller particle size powders
all of those properties are improved.
So in all the areas of mobility we have a role to play with reengineered rubber.
In the construction arena, we can play a role in many part of a building envelope
and, obviously, with green building being an emerging trend in the construction industry,
we believe that our materials have got a significant role to play.
If we take a look at the first example, this is a part of a building that you never see.
Underneath the flooring cementitious substrates are used
to bind the flooring to the building envelope
by adding powder to these systems. You can improve the hydrophobicity,
you can improve the flexibility, so if things move thermally, it doesn’t crack
and the improved sound deadening of the flooring system that results.
This is the roof of the Anaheim Hilton in California.
Underneath that typical cool rooftop coat is higher rubber containing primer
that was used to repair the roof, improve flexibility,
provide additional insulating benefits to the coating system.
And it was much, much cheaper than any other alternative system.
This is outside our plant in Atlanta.
We’re working on applications for driveway maintenance
and for parking lot coatings to replace solvent containing asphalt systems,
very poor durability, horrible to use, and all solvent containing.
These are water based systems with a high rubber content
to the more durable, look better, and last a lot, lot longer.
And lastly, here’s an example where slip resistance is critical.
These are plastic modular tires that have been modified with our material
to enable increased flexibility as parts of the forest...
parts or not, improve slip resistance, lower cost, and recycle content.
So I hope with those examples I’ve given you a sense
that not only could we deliver sustainability benefits performance
and costs reduction to our customers,
but we’re well on the way to solving the environmental problem
that are showed in the first slide.
Thanks very much.