Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

"My research has found that crumb rubber, derived from waste tires, can be used as a filter media," Xie explains. "The crumb rubber could be used for treating wastewater, ship ballast water, and storm water."

Crumb rubber is produced by chopping up and grinding up waste tires to a desired size, cleaning the rubber and removing any metal particles. It is currently being used in highway pavement, athletic track surfaces, playgrounds, landfill liners, compost bulking agents, various manufactured products, energy recovery and even as artificial reefs for aquatic life.

For traditional wastewater filtration, gravity downflow granular filters using sand or anthracite as a medium are commonly used. One major problem with these filters is that upon backwashing the particles, the larger ones settle at a greater rate than the smaller.

The Penn State researcher explains that this

Scrap Tires Can Be Used To Filter Wastewater