Holst O, Stenberg B, Christiansson M
Dept. of Biotechnology, Lund University, Sweden.
Biodegradation. 1998;9(3-4):301-10. doi: 10.1023/a:1008337708006.
Every year large amounts of spent rubber material, mainly from rubber tyres, are discarded. Of the annual total global production of rubber material, which amounts to 16-17 million tonnes, approximately 65% is used for the production of tyres. About 250 millions spent car tyres are generated yearly in USA only. This huge amount of waste rubber material is an environmental problem of great concern. Various ways to remediate the problem have been proposed. Among these are road fillings and combustion in kilns. Spent tyres, however, comprise valuable material that could be recycled if a proper technique can be developed. One way of recycling old tyres is to blend ground spent rubber with virgin material followed by vulcanization. The main obstacle to this recycling is bad adhesion between the crumb and matrix of virgin rubber material due to little formation of interfacial sulphur crosslinks. Micro-organisms able to break sulphur-sulphur and sulphur-carbon bonds can be used to devulcanize waste rubber in order to make polymer chains on the surface more flexible and facilitate increased binding upon vulcanization. Several species belonging to both Bacteria and Archaea have this ability. Mainly sulphur oxidizing species, such as different species of the genus Thiobacillus and thermoacidophiles of the order of Sulfolobales, have been studied in this context. The present paper will give a background to the problem and an overview of the biotechnological possibilities for solutions of waste rubber as an environmental problem, focusing on microbial desulphurization.
每年都有大量主要来自橡胶轮胎的废旧橡胶材料被丢弃。在全球每年总计1600 - 1700万吨的橡胶材料产量中，约65%用于轮胎生产。仅在美国，每年就产生约2.5亿条废旧汽车轮胎。如此大量的废旧橡胶材料是一个备受关注的环境问题。人们已经提出了各种解决该问题的方法。其中包括用于道路填充和在窑中燃烧。然而，废旧轮胎包含有价值的材料，如果能开发出合适的技术，这些材料是可以回收利用的。回收旧轮胎的一种方法是将磨碎的废旧橡胶与原始材料混合，然后进行硫化。这种回收方式的主要障碍是由于界面硫交联形成较少，导致碎胶与原始橡胶材料基体之间的粘附性较差。能够断裂硫 - 硫键和硫 - 碳键的微生物可用于使废旧橡胶脱硫，从而使表面的聚合物链更具柔韧性，并在硫化时促进结合力增强。细菌和古菌中的几个物种都具有这种能力。在这方面，主要研究了硫氧化物种，如硫杆菌属的不同物种以及硫化叶菌目的嗜热嗜酸菌。本文将介绍该问题的背景，并概述将废旧橡胶作为环境问题解决的生物技术可能性，重点是微生物脱硫。
