Muskegon is trailblazing a major recycling initiative with a road project that will use more than 10,000 scrap tires in concrete. (Jake May | MLive.com)

MUSKEGON, MI – Muskegon is trailblazing a major recycling initiative with a road project that will use more than 10,000 scrap tires.

While scrap tires have been used before in asphalt paving, Muskegon will be the first community in the state to use them in concrete when it repaves a portion of Sherman Boulevard next summer, according to Muskegon Assistant City Engineer Joel Brookens.

The city is working with Michigan Technological University to use ground up tires in concrete mix as part of a pilot project that recently received state funding.

The concrete/tire mix will be used on one of five lanes of Sherman Boulevard that will be repaved from Seaway Drive nearly to Barclay Street in summer 2023, Brookens told MLive.

The lane will be compared with the other four for durability as part of Michigan Tech’s testing of the concrete mix. The mix will replace up to 15% of the fine aggregate with ground tire rubber.

Professors with Michigan Tech contacted Muskegon to determine its interest in testing the scrap tire concrete, Brookens said. Muskegon prefers to repave major streets with concrete for more durability, and apparently is one of few smaller communities in the state to do so, he said.

“(Michigan Tech professors) have been wanting to put this on a road project for the last couple of years,” he said.

The city recently received a $318,344 scrap tire market development grant from the state for the project, which has an overall cost of $1.3 million.

The grant application indicates that Michigan Tech previously worked with General Motors to test the concrete/tire mix at its Milford Proving Ground.

The university’s research on concrete/tire concrete has been published in several academic papers and presented at research conferences. Michigan Tech will receive $70,000 of the grant, and will provide a $70,000 match toward the project, according to the grant application.

Michigan Tech will conduct several tests of the 10-inch-thick concrete that will be poured on Sherman Boulevard, including noise tests. It also will be watching for wear, joint performance, cracking and freeze-thaw durability.

Results of the project, which will use 10,200 car tires, have the potential to provide a significant new market for problematic scrap tires. If the entire ½-mile road project, rather than just one lane of it, used the concrete/tire mix, it would use up 51,000 tires.

The state estimates about 10 million tires are scrapped each year.

“Even as other markets for scrap tires exist and continue to grow, tire derived fuel (TDF) and rubber modified asphalt for example, the rubber modified concrete market has the potential to be larger and have a much more profound impact on the recycling of rubber tires,” the city’s grant application states.

“Concrete is one of the most widely used building materials and is one of the most recyclable materials used in construction. If it can be proven that adding rubber to concrete creates a more durable concrete with (the) same costs, it could become a normal additive to any concrete application.”

Michigan Tech has worked on rubberized asphalt projects with numerous road commissions around the state, including those in Muskegon, Kent, Kalamazoo and Bay counties.

Michigan’s scrap tire grant program is funded with fees charged during vehicle title transfers.

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