The carbon composite material can be incorporated in batteries, supercapacitors, and catalysis and water filtration technologies.

The technology could introduce a new market for the one billion scrap tires generated globally each year, which are typically sent to landfills or used as fillers in plastics, rubbers, asphalt, artificial turf and civil engineering applications.

Our success in producing higher performance carbon composites from waste tire rubber for potential use in energy storage applications adds a new value to recycled tires.

—Amit Naskar

When ORNL researchers tested the recovered carbon in anodes of lithium-ion batteries, the laboratory-scale coin cells had a higher capacity and faster charging rates than that of conventional graphite batteries. Using the carbon black composites as a lower cost alternative to graphite could potentially reduce the cost of lithium ion batteries by 10%.

The ORNL team will collaborate with RJ Lee Group to further develop the technology through a privately funded sponsored research project.

The next step is to scale up the production of the carbon materials so that we can replicate the lab-scale performance in larger format cells.

—Parans Paranthaman

The research on conversion of recycled tires to graphite powders was funded by the laboratory’s Technology Innovation Program. The evaluation of the new materials as novel battery electrodes was sponsored by DOE’s Office of Science.