Rubber recycling

One of the more critical aspects of rubber regards the difficulty in recycling it: once it has been vulcanized, it loses its plasticity and cannot be reworked. Thus production scrap and post-consumer rubber are generally discarded, with a heavy impact on production costs.
With this as a starting point, Maris (located in Rosta, Turin, Italy) has developed an innovative rubber devulcanization process using a twin-screw co-rotating extruder. Requiring no chemicals, this fully thermal-mechanical process minimizes environmental impact while also reducing production costs, since the material produced can be reintroduced into the production process. 
Maris will present its technology at PLAST 2012.