First Australian finalist in Edison Awards

Green technology company Green Distillation Technologies (GDT) has become the first ever Australian finalist in the Edison Awards - a prestigious innovation prize named after inventor Thomas Edison. The company has developed a technology which takes old tyres - the disposal of which is regarded as one of the world’s worst environmental problems - and recycles them into saleable commodities of carbon, oil and steel.

The technology is known as ‘Destructive Distillation’ and uses controlled heat to reduce whole tyres to their constituent elements, which then reform into oils that are distilled and used as a heating fuel during the production process. Carbon is meanwhile delivered in a high-purity powder form, while steel is collected clean and unchanged. The process is entirely emission-free.

GDT is the only company in Australia that remanufactures the rubber from old tyres into a different energy form, as other recycling methods merely change the shape or appearance of the rubber. The company’s NSW pilot plant is currently in the process of being upgraded to a commercial-scale plant capable of processing 19,000 tonnes of tyres annually - approximately 3% of the end-of-life tyres that are generated in Australia each year.

The award winners will be announced in New York on 23 April.