Martin von Wolfersdorff is a consultant specialising in alternative rubber fillers and tire pyrolysis. He is in contact with over 320 tire pyrolysis companies globally and advises tyre manufacturing associations, tire manufacturers, tire collectors, refineries, pyrolysis technology providers & operators on the global tire pyrolysis industry and the marketing of recovered carbon black. Previously, Martin worked in the carbon black industry with Cabot, in the custom colour masterbatch industry with Americhem and in the white pigment industry with Huntsman Pigments. Martin holds a Dipl. Ing. (Univ.) degree in chemical engineering from the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.
Paul Ita runs Notch Consulting, a Massachusetts-based research company dedicated to the market research needs of the global specialty chemicals industry. Mr. Ita focuses on raw materials for the global tire and rubber industries, with a particular focus on carbon black, silica, and rubber chemicals. Through Notch, he publishes the Carbon Black World Data Book and the Carbon Black Quarterly Newsletter.
Aatif joined Cabot in 2013 in the company’s purification solutions business, where he held positions of increasing responsibility in global marketing and global product management. Since 2019, he has served as the vice president of marketing and strategy in Cabot’s reinforcement materials business, where he leads the global marketing team, driving both organic and inorganic strategies for the group. Prior to joining Cabot, Aatif worked in business development and mergers and acquisitions management at Avery Dennison Corporation. Aatif holds a BTech in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MA in business administration.
Daniel joined Continental in 2017 and has held several positions in material and product development in Continental’s tires business sector. Since 2021, he is leading the development of sustainable materials within Continental’s business sector ContiTech. In this context, he passionately works on strategic as well as operational topics and drives the implementation of more sustainable materials into ContiTech’s material and product portfolio. Daniel is a trained chemist with a PhD in material- and nanochemistry.
After achieving a summa cum laude M.Sc Degree in Chemical Engineering in Rome in 1994 on organic Materials, Mr Cialone devoted himself to the tire industry from 1995 until today. Over the last 29 years, Massimo has worked for international global companies in different roles in R&D, where he was able to gain expertise in both raw materials to compounding as well as processing. He joined Hankook - European Technical Center in 2015, where he serves a Material and Compounding Chief Specialist. Since 2019 his major focus is the development of innovative materials in the field of sustainability as well as coordinating research project in the EU area.
Alejandro Navazas is a biologist specialized in environmental topics like waste cleanup and hazardous substances. He obtained his doctorate while working as a research scientist at the Centre for Environmental Sciences in Belgium. Since joining EuRIC in 2020, his main focus is addressing technical issues at the intersection of chemicals, products, and waste legislation of materials recovered from plastics and tyres.
Educated at Oxford and The Royal Military Academy, Robert Harper has been an industrial technology entrepreneur in the circular chemicals and renewable energy sectors for 14 years. This has involved innovating and scaling several plant technologies from lab concept through to scaled production and the production of novel sustainable fuels and circular chemicals under long-term contracts with several major multinationals. He is the Co-founder and Deputy CEO of Circtec, in which role he is currently focussed on deploying a new flagship plant scale-up in the Netherlands. He pioneered the first ever REACh registration for tyre pyrolysis products in 2015 and the first ever ISCC registration for tyre pyrolysis products in 2017. In 2021 Circtec and Birla Carbon announced a long-term supply agreement and partnership for sustainability. Circtec has 2 operational plants and a third under construction, and holds full permits for 250,000 tonnes per year of end-of-life tyre processing capacity in Europe.
Dr Hallett has worked in the polymer industry for over 25 years, including 15 years with Birla Carbon. He has held a number of roles including product design, research and development and customer support. For the past three years he has been part of the core team introducing circular materials to Birla Carbon and is now the technical lead for Birla Carbon’s Continua™ SCM product range.
Bio to follow
Chen Xiaoyan has been actively exploring high-quality development related to ecological priorities and green development, leading her team to develop the internationally leading "intelligent green cracking for waste tires and carbon black deep processing equipment". She has also lead the construction of three "Industry 4.0" intelligent factories for waste tire recycling. Her work has been helping the industry to develop in a green and sustainable way.
Yusuf Güner graduated with a BSc and MSc from the Middle East Technical University Chemistry Department in 1998 and 2003 respectively. He joined Standard Profil Group in 2003 where he has worked in different positions, most recently as R&D Materials Expert. Yusuf lectures on Extrusion Technology at Düzce University where he is also doing his Phd in the Composite Materials Technology Research Group. He has over 20 years of experience in rubber formulations and has had ten international articles published.
Dr. Xin Tan graduated with her Ph.D. degree in Polymer Science from the University of Akron in 2017. She joined Dow Shanghai in 2018, where she successively served as the technical support and application development scientist for EPDM and APAC application technology leader of hot melt adhesive. She has built extensive expertise in industrial rubber applications including weatherstrip, hoses, belts, molded rubber goods, TPV, rubber chemical masterbatch, etc. Xin joined Cabot in 2022 as Sr. Scientist working on the research and application development of sustainable reinforcement materials and elastomer composites. She has nine papers published on peer reviewed technical journals and five patent applications.
Pieter ter Haar is an expert in recovered carbon black (rCB), pyrolysis, and is a former rubber compounder. He has extensive expertise managing R&D for rCB companies in Europe and North America. After obtaining his Chemistry degree from the Hanze University (Groningen, the Netherlands) he worked as a Rubber Compounder for Fenner Dunlop Conveyor Belting in the Netherlands, where he was in charge of sustainability development of rubber compounds. Pieter joined Pyrolyx/cct Stegelitz in 2015 to develop, build, and manage the first R&D competence center fully dedicated to rCB research. He is one of the founding members of ASTM committee D36 on recovered carbon black, and in his current role as Vice Chair, he leads various task groups within the committee. Pieter is currently president of Terhaar Consulting Inc. in Ontario Canada and consults internationally on various topics related to sustainability, pyrolysis and recovered Carbon Black and is part of the advisory committee for “Recovered Carbon Black World”.
Franz studied Chemistry at the TU Chemnitz and at the TU Graz and then did his PhD in the Atmospheric Physic group at ETH Zürich. His research field was the investigation atmospheric aging process on soot particles and how this contributes to the formation of clouds. During that time Franz used a broad range of aerosol-based instrumentation to observe changes in the morphology and chemistry of isolated soot particles. Based on this work, he was granted with 195 kCHF by the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) and Innosuisse over 18-months to develop a new method for the online-characterisation of the structure and surface of Carbon Black and similar materials. He is now commercialising this new analytical approach via his own company, FemtoG.
Jade Chalancon has been a chemical engineer at Elanova lab, a French rubber technical centre, since 2021. She is in charge of multi-partner projects on 3D printing and rubber recycling issues. She specialises in pyrolysis of rubber goods. She graduated from SIGMA Clermont-Ferrand in 2020 with a specialisation in materials chemistry.
Petros Mubari is pursuing his Ph.D. in Process Engineering at IMT Mines Albi in France where he is in his final year. He completed his undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering with honours, which sparked his interest in advanced process optimisation and sustainable technologies. He also holds master’s degrees in chemical engineering and materials engineering. Petros's passion for finding innovative solutions to real-world engineering problems led him to pursue a Ph.D. in the same field. He has demonstrated experience in waste management, tyre recycling, chemical/process engineering, mass and energy balances, materials science, carbon materials, solid mechanics, material characterisation, functional materials, computational modelling techniques, and product design. Throughout his Ph.D. journey, Petros has specialized in the recovery of carbon black from waste tyre pyrolysis. Along with understanding the properties of recovered carbon black, his research work also includes the application of carbon black in various domains, notably rubber reinforcement and as anodes in Li-ion batteries. Petros firmly believes that combining process engineering with circular economy principles is fundamental in creating a more sustainable and resource-efficient future, and he is determined to contribute to this vision.
Alex Bowles is a final year PhD student at Imperial College, London. His research focusses on high-value product recovery from waste tyres, with particular focus on tyre derived activated carbon. Alex has been investigating tyre recycling for four years, and prior to his PhD, researched the potential of waterjet granulation of car tyres. Alex draws on the experience of his PhD supervisor, Dr Geoffrey Fowler. Geoff is a Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College, London, and has over 30 years of experience in the tyre recycling sector. Geoff’s research focusses on pyrolysis and manages a world-leading laboratory with 5 different pyrolysis reactors and a wide array of characterisation instrumentation.
2002-2008: Mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University.
Degree: Diploma
2008-2015: Research Scientist at the Institute of Aerodynamics and Chair of Fluid Mechanics of RTWH Aachen University.
Doctoral Degree (“Dr.-Ing.”) in 2014
Since 2015: Engineer in the R&D department of NEUMAN & ESSER Process Technology GmbH. Responsible for grinding and classifying development projects.
Krzysztof Wróblewski is a chemical and process engineer who gained his first pyrolysis experiences at Warsaw University of Technology as a member of research team and quickly became one of the designers of new technology at Contec. Taking part in the construction and leading the startup of the plant allowed him to implement and test new ideas. Now, as CEO, Krzysztof is still developing new solutions to perfect the process performance.
