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Thanks, I will. It's always ticked me off to have to pay $1 to just GET RID of an old tire when they should be either taking it away for free or paying you something like 25 cents for it. Some people grumble about these "tire mountains" as eyesores and mosquito breeding grounds but "microwave oil shale", as it refers to rubber tires, still has to be viable economically to work. Don't expect santa claus, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny to solve the problem for FREE.....Do you know about RIS(Resonant Ionization Spectroscopy)? It does with precisely tuned lasars/wavelengths just about what MOS technology does to "dead oil". It converts garbage into pure isotopes.

"...A somewhat related subject : growing mounds of old rubber tires. Once in a Popular Science(or Mechanics)article, I read about a couple of guys down south somewhere that had worked out this process : cut the tires up into small chunks, then drop them into a bath of liquid lead. The steel cords drop to the bottom and the rubber molecules, as froth, come to the top. Thus you skim off the froth as feed stock for new tires. Sounded like it might work as a rubber tire recycling process, instead of just burying them in these ever growing mountains of old tires. Recycling old tires, like old oil fields is GREAT, if it's economically viable. Does anyone here know any thing more about this idea?..."

Careful. Rubber, as in tires, is a vulcanized product, and is not able to be recycled back into rubber for new tires. Rubber is actually a Thermoset Plastic, rather than a Thermoplastic Plastic.

That means that as it is heated or aged, it becomes harder and harder, until it is brittle and useless for nothing but landfill.

Here's a simplified version of the process of making tires:

Raw Latex rubber (a milky coloured sticky mass like pine sap) is put in a mixer (called a mill) and mixed with chemicals (yellow sulfur, carbon-black, and other stuff) to form a less-sticky, soft, black substance.
That stuff (a measured amount) is then placed in a mold that has the shape of a tire.
The mold is heated to about 650 degrees F for a while, and vulcanization (solidification)begins.
The mold is then cooled quickly after a specified time, to room temperature, and the tire is removed for use. It's soft or hard, depending on the time spent at the hot temperature - short time=soft, long time=hard.

Vulcanization, once started, never stops, but only slows down. After about 20-30 years, a brand new tire is useless, because it will have hardened to being brittle.

That's why old tires get cracks in them, and the process cannot be reversed. Hope this helps............FRegards

Addenda:
Yellow sulfur-primary vulcanization agent
Carbon Black-UV protection, and it looks cool

Additionaly, I remember a trial road being paved with a mix of asphalt, ground-up old tires, and gravel. They tried it as a means of using-up old tires, knowing the vulcanization process would continue! (Political boondogle)

They had to replace the road after 5 years.............FRegards