Sustainable tire materials
Sustainable tire materials
(OP)
Good day, have been doing research on sustainable synthetic materials used for rubber and besides goodyear's Bio isoprene and yokohama's orange oil use have not found anything more or less interesting. I just blame my searching skills for this, I can not believe that there are close to none alternatives to using petrochemicals as humanity is starting to concern more and more on ecological problems. Just wanted to ask maybe you know something about sustainable materials used for creating rubber?





RE: Sustainable tire materials
Regards
Pat
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RE: Sustainable tire materials
RE: Sustainable tire materials
Uh .... not exactly. Ya see, the amount of trees planted is dependent on the law of supply and demand. If the demand for natural rubber were to go up, then more tress would be planted. In fact, that is what has happened due to China entering into the tire market in a big way.
The second part about properties is not exactly true either. If you remember that the reason why synthetical rubber was invented was that WW2 cut off supply of natural rubber to the Allies - and that opened a whole new avenue to research - I hope it would be obvious that research into using natural rubber would eventually yield results. It's just that oil is stupidly inexpensive. It just doesn't make sense to pursue "sustainable" sources when the competitive pressures are all about price.
But don't get me wrong. I'm all for sustainable. But as an observer this is how I see it.
RE: Sustainable tire materials
Then one additional thought: Carbon black is a petrochemical and I'll bet that would yield some interesting avenues of research. Don't forget that there are other materials that can be used as fillers in place of carbon black - silica, clay are 2 that comes to mind.
RE: Sustainable tire materials
RE: Sustainable tire materials
CapriRacer is spot on. Economics plays a major role. Also he has alluded to rubber polymer is but one constituent in a rubber compound.
Regards
Pat
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RE: Sustainable tire materials
If sustainability brings an even shorter service life it will be very sad.
RE: Sustainable tire materials
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Sustainable tire materials
Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm
for site rules
RE: Sustainable tire materials
There are many types of rubbers and not all of them are suitable for use in tires. This is especially true of the rubbers that are used in the underhood area.
Unfortunately, that means that tires are going to develop cracks. In some repsects that is a good thing, because cracks give an indication of the state of the properties of the rubber. However, cracks are the result of both the properties of the rubber and the amount of strain the rubber has been subjected to. Little strain = little cracking.
In order to slow down the appearance of these cracks, tires have antioxidants as put of the rubber mix. But these get used up - and sometimes fairly quickly.
So don't be surprised to see quite a wide range when it comes to cracking in tires.