Stockpiles of scrap tires have obvious effects on the environment, including leaching of chemicals into the soil and groundwater. The irregular shape cause tires to settle unevenly in landfills, pushing to the surface and harming landfill covers. The rubber retains heat, causing piles to ignite and potentially burning for months, generating toxic oils and unhealthy smoke. Disease-carrying mosquitos and rodents thrive in the damp, warm environments.

Tire manufacturers use enormous amounts of petroleum resources to manufacture the rubber compound. Industry has a responsibility to recover higher value raw materials for reuse. For instance, the demand for low cost, high energy, more efficient batteries has increased exponentially in the last decade, and the need for high quality raw materials for those products has grown accordingly. Delta-Energy has met this need by establishing the technology to recover carbon black from used tires for use in lithium-ion batteries, meeting the mounting demand while helping to eliminate the growing piles of used tires around the world.

Delta-Energy has developed technology that breaks rubber down into its organic components for use in solvents, chemical feedstocks, and fuel. The same process can also recover carbon black and minerals that make up 40% of tire rubber weight for reuse in rubber reinforcement, pigements, and other materials. Product manufacturers reduce their carbon footprint, utilizing significant levels of recycled material content in their products.

Delta-Energy is the first petroleum-based, resource recovery company to make this process possible. Through its one-of-a-kind patented DEPolymerization™ process, Delta-Energy found the means to recover D-E Black® products with properties comparable to thermal and furnace carbon blacks.

In 2007 Delta-Energy became the first company to commercialize recovered carbon black based product made from scrap rubber.