{"id":41127,"date":"2017-03-10T07:35:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T06:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rss.nova-institut.net\/public.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.innovations-report.com%2Fhtml%2Freport%2Fmaterials-science%2Fturning-food-waste-into-tires.html"},"modified":"2017-03-08T20:27:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T19:27:27","slug":"turning-food-waste-into-tires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/turning-food-waste-into-tires\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning food waste into tires"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2017_EggRubber005.3624d4b5\"
Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed a patent-pending technology for incorporating food waste into rubber. Photo by Kenneth Chamberlain, courtesy of The Ohio State University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered that food waste can partially replace the petroleum-based filler that has been used in manufacturing tires for more than a century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"2015_KatrinaCornishOSU01_v2__2_\"
Katrina Cornish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In tests, rubber made with the new fillers exceeds industrial standards for performance, which may ultimately open up new applications for rubber.<\/p>\n

As Katrina Cornish<\/a> explains it, the technology has the potential to solve three problems: It makes the manufacture of rubber products more sustainable, reduces American dependence on foreign oil and keeps waste out of landfills.<\/p>\n

Cornish, an Ohio Research Scholar and Endowed Chair in Biomaterials at Ohio State, has spent years cultivating new domestic rubber sources, including a rubber-producing dandelion<\/a>. Now she has a patent-pending method for turning eggshells and tomato peels into viable\u2014and locally sourced\u2014replacements for carbon black<\/a>, a petroleum-based filler that American companies often purchase from overseas.<\/p>\n

About 30 percent of a typical automobile tire is carbon black; it\u2019s the reason tires appear black. It makes the rubber durable, and its cost varies with petroleum prices.<\/p>\n

Carbon black is getting harder to come by, Cornish said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tire industry is growing very quickly, and we don\u2019t just need more natural rubber, we need more filler, too,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe number of tires being produced worldwide is going up all the time, so countries are using all the carbon black they can make. There\u2019s no longer a surplus, so we can\u2019t just buy some from Russia to make up the difference like we used to.<\/p>\n

\"OSU,
Here, dried and ground tomato skins (top) and eggshells (bottom) are shown after coarse, medium, and fine processing before being added to rubber. Photo by Kenneth Chamberlain, courtesy of The Ohio State University. – Zoom –<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAt the same time,\u201d she added, \u201cwe need to have more sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she and her team are getting eggshells and other food waste from Ohio food producers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not suggesting that we collect the eggshells from your breakfast,\u201d Cornish said. \u201cWe\u2019re going right to the biggest source.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the USDA, Americans consume nearly 100 billion eggs each year. Half are cracked open in commercial food factories, which pay to have the shells hauled to landfills by the ton. There, the mineral-packed shells don\u2019t break down.<\/p>\n

The second most popular vegetable in the United States\u2014the tomato\u2014also provides a source of filler, the researchers found. Americans eat 13 million tons of tomatoes per year, most of them canned or otherwise processed.<\/p>\n

Commercial tomatoes have been bred to grow thick, fibrous skins so that they can survive being packed and transported long distances. When food companies want to make a product such as tomato sauce, they peel and discard the skin, which isn\u2019t easily digestible.<\/p>\n

\"Cindy_Barrera\"
Cindy Barrera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cindy Barrera, a postdoctoral researcher in Cornish\u2019s lab, found in tests that eggshells have porous microstructures that provide larger surface area for contact with the rubber, and give rubber-based materials unusual properties. Tomato peels, on the other hand, are highly stable at high temperatures and can also be used to generate material with good performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cFillers generally make rubber stronger, but they also make it less flexible,\u201d Barrera said. \u201cWe found that replacing different portions of carbon black with ground eggshells and tomato peels caused synergistic effects\u2014for instance, enabling strong rubber to retain flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may find that we can pursue many applications that were not possible before with natural rubber,\u201d Cornish added.<\/p>\n

The new rubber doesn\u2019t look black, but rather reddish brown, depending on the amount of eggshell or tomato in it. With doctoral student Tony Ren, Cornish and Barrera are now testing different combinations and looking at ways to add color to the materials.<\/p>\n

Current Ohio State doctoral student Jessica Slutzky and former master\u2019s student Griffin Michael Bates participated in the research.<\/p>\n

The university has licensed the patent-pending technology to Cornish\u2019s company, EnergyEne, for further development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered that food waste can partially replace the petroleum-based filler that has been used in manufacturing tires for more than a century. In tests, rubber made with the new fillers exceeds industrial standards for performance, which may ultimately open up new applications for rubber. As Katrina Cornish explains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5842,6026],"supplier":[13200,420],"class_list":["post-41127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biomass","tag-biopolymers","supplier-energyene-inc","supplier-ohio-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41127"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=41127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}