Renewable Rikers as a Blueprint for a Sustainable City

A couple of months ago I wrote about the roadside pollution from electric cars – the particles from tyres and brakes. In the UK, non-tailpipe emissions are around 8% of air pollution, so it’s not a huge contributor to the problem. But due to the weight of their batteries, electric vehicles may produce more tyre particles than fossil fuel vehicles, and so it may be a more significant source of pollution in future. If we want electric cars to live up to the ‘zero emissions’ labels that many of them already boast, we’re going to need better tyres. Particles from tyres also enter watercourses and are a significant contributor to ocean pollution, giving us a second reason to pay attention to this more or less invisible environmental problem. Enso is a start-up that is developing tyres specifically for electric cars – the first to do so that I’m aware of, and potentially ahead of a rush in that direction. That means they will be designing for efficiency, in order to maximise range. They’re also working on durability, and a cleaner, lower carbon tyre.

Refining crude oil for industrial use relies on separation processes like centrifuging and distillation to remove impurities and separate small and large hydrocarbons for use in different applications. In order to turn used oil into desirable products, plants can use similar approaches to those applied to crude oil to remove unwanted particles and sort degraded hydrocarbons from usable ones. There are two broad approaches to motor oil recycling: re-refining and chemical recycling. Re-refining aims to extend the fluid’s utility for another generation and avoid releasing it as a pollutant into the environment, while chemical recycling starts with breaking down the hydrocarbons that gave the former oil its unique properties in order to create feedstock for a wide variety of new products. Both approaches start with removing contaminants like dirt and metal particles from the fluid.