The Road to Sustainable Tire Materials: Current State-of-the-Art and Future Prospectives

Abstract

The development of a 100% sustainable tire has emerged as a milestone for several tire companies across the globe. It has created new commercial opportunities for the biobased, renewable, and recycled polymer materials. However, there are concerns that the incorporation of such sustainable new materials may have an undesirable impact on the main performance properties of the tire. At the same time, with new capabilities and product innovations, it can help us meet society’s need in a more sustainable fashion and protect the environment. This Feature first outlines the opportunities and need for sustainable tire materials. Next, it describes the main types of sustainable material attributes in tire material, elastomers, reinforcing agents, fibers, and plasticizers, among a few others. The challenges to achieving the performance properties are discussed with possible design guidelines. Recent approaches to the tire attributes are described in the form of a meticulous overview of the existing literature, with a critical analysis of some of them. This contribution attempts to highlight, in a comprehensive way, sustainable tire materials on the basis of recent research advancements, existing challenges, and prospective future scope in this field.

Differing unsaturation levels of soybean oils impact the properties of peroxide‐vulcanized carbon black‐filled ethylene‐propylene‐diene monomer rubber

“…The most common processing oil used for EPDM is paraffinic oil (PO), which contains n ‐alkanes and is obtained by distillation of crude oil. Many researchers have studied the possibility of replacing petroleum‐based PO with eco‐friendly plant seed oils, 3 such as palm oil, 4,5 jojoba oil, 6 and soybean oil (SBO) 7–9 . SBO is one of cheapest and most abundant plant seed oils and is reported to be a strong plasticizer for non‐polar elastomers, including EPDM 10,11 .…”

Progress in recycling and reutilization of waste polyethylene terephthalate

“…Michelin, in collaboration with the French biotechnology company Carbios, used PET degradation enzymes to recycle recovered PET and successfully produced recycled PET fibers that met the performance criteria for tire cord. 79 Continental used ContiRe.Tex technology (a new recycling process that does not require chemical decomposition) to prepare recycled PET fiber cord from PET bottles and compounded the cord with dandelion-based rubber or natural rubber to manufacture green tires, which were launched in the European market in June 2022. In 2022, Goodyear announced they were developing an environmentally friendly tire containing 90% sustainable materials using a chemical process that converts PET recovered from plastic bottles and other plastic waste into monomers, which are then synthetically spun to obtain technical grade PET fibers for tire cord applications.…”

Acid-Cured Norbornylized Seed Oil Epoxides for Sustainable, Recyclable, and Reprocessable Thermosets and Composite Application

“…One of the key strategies in the development of a sustainable economy of renewable materials is the sustainable use of natural resources . Integration of biodegradability, lower cost, minor toxicity, and green chemistry provides a competitive advantage to bio-based materials compared to petrochemicals. − Naturally resourced polymer products are of the highest demand, − with strong research efforts on understanding their degradation mechanisms, recycling, and environmental impact. − Vegetable oils are a predominant set of natural resources majorly used in alkyds for baking finishes and metal coatings − or as comonomers in various reported research works − for varied applications like plasticizers, elastomers, and thermosets. ,, However, the application of vegetable oils in thermosets is limited by their lower glass transition temperature and sluggish reactivity . However, higher-reactive norbornene ring-incorporated functionalized vegetable oils and their epoxides offer massive promise to surmount the intrinsic constraints. ,− Epoxidized seed oils are currently being used for additives, plasticizers, stabilizers, and specialty coating applications, with many more perspectives being researched for novel applications. − …”