A newly approved standard from ASTM International’s recovered carbon black committee (D36) provides a test that will help to differentiate products and provide a quality control tool for producers and users. Recovered carbon black (rCB) is a recycled product made from end-of-life tires.

Recovered carbon black can reduce the tire industry’s reliance on petrochemicals by replacing a portion of traditional carbon black with a sustainable and circular alternative.

The new standard (soon to be published as D8474) describes a thermogravimetric (TGA) technique to determine the amounts of organic residue, overall fixed carbon content, and ash content in recovered carbon black.

The new standard will be a useful tool specifically for quality control and can be used for off-take agreements, technical data sheets, and certificates of analysis. This will be most useful for manufacturers, as well as users and consumers.

This standard will improve the adoption of rCB. Recovered carbon black can complement or substitute conventional carbon black in many applications, including the production of new, more sustainable tires.

—ASTM member Pieter ter Haar, from Circtec

ASTM welcomes participation in the development of its standards.

We are always looking for technical input and testing capabilities for the development of new standards. We’re also looking for labs with TGA capability to help develop bias and precision studies for new standards.

—Pieter ter Haar

The ASTM Committee D36 on Recovered Carbon Black (rCB) was launched in 2017 to support the emerging rCB industry regarding the quality and safety of its products. Several sub-committees are responsible for developing standards for terminology, guidance, practices, and testing methods.

The D36’s first standard, published in 2019, defines important terms in the rCB industry (D8178).