Industry 4.0, sustainability drive rubber industry in coming decades

What will the rubber industry look like in the next 50 years? Integrated and automated, for sure, but will it even feature natural rubber?

It is an audacious task to forecast the future of any industry, taking stock of the knowledge and tools of today and attempting to predict the trends and technologies that will, quite literally, drive tomorrow's commerce.

Advances in the rubber industry over the next 50 years no doubt will include the electric vehicle revolution and related discoveries in the chemistry of compounds that form tires, hoses and seals—but what about artificial intelligence that can drive a car while a human passenger sleeps?

Or the very real impact of the "Internet of Things," a product of Industry 4.0 that connects machines to human workers and the internet, enabling greater safety and cost-saving measures through predictive maintenance?

The medical industry is perpetually advancing, with current leaps in the biopharmaceutical and medical film spaces, as well as through technologies that enable less invasive surgeries and home delivery medications.

And automation will be key to the rubber industry's success, according to LabsCubed CEO Khaled Boqaileh, co-founder of the successful start-up software testing company based in Kitchener, Ontario, that began in 2016.

"Since then, the technology shift we've seen has been amazing," Boqaileh said. "The industry, although well established, has begun to embrace new technologies such as automation and AI to greatly improve all aspects of rubber development and manufacturing.

"I believe that we are at the beginning of a major shift toward Industry 4.0. This change will not only enable rubber companies to make better products, but it will also help to attract young and fresh talent. This is vital to ensuring the continued growth and innovation of the industry.

"This is an exciting time to be in the rubber industry as it makes this big shift."

Others believe technological shifts will occur through sustainability, as "greener" tire and non-tire goods making methods could necessitate a move toward sustainable feedstocks—like carbon from CO2 for carbon nanotubes or hydrogen as a byproduct of the pyrolysis of natural gas for carbon black production.

"Improved sustainable feedstocks for virgin materials are possible ... for biomass feedstocks for carbon black production," said August Krupp, director of rubber development at Austin, Texas-based Molecular Rebar Design L.L.C. "We have seen some interesting supply prospects in our own carbon nanotube space for utilizing CO2 as a supply source for nanotubes."

Still others posit that tectonic shifts in elastomer technology will come through sensors and software, as the broad notion of predictive maintenance assumes applications in conveyance solutions, air spring, smart tire and elastomer fatigue-testing tech.

Will Mars, president of Findlay, Ohio-based Endurica L.L.C., said simulation will continue to be at the center of tire development.

"With a simulation, you can get some very good results within a week or two," he said. "It really does help you to speed up development timelines. It helps you to de-risk development. I would say that expectations have gotten higher over the last 50 years.

"I can't imagine how anybody could compete these days without some level of simulation technology in their development process."

The physical testing side for the tire, in concert with AI and smart tires for autonomous vehicle production, will continue to be important, said Jerry Potts, president of tire testing and consulting firm GRP Dynamics L.L.C., and also an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Akron.

"What if the tire fails? You will need to have that tire-warning system, one that uses vibration measured by a computer—tires will have to have a self-diagnosing element," he said.

Such smart tech may not forecast a driverless vehicle just yet, Potts said.

"There has to be a sensing and testing element, but there also has to be an expert in the vehicle who can recognize and monitor the situation, similar to aviation with a pilot where there is less flying, but increased management and monitoring," he said.

And since small changes in tire compounding produce large changes on the corners of the "performance triangle," perhaps a non-pneumatic tire is the answer.

"Rolling resistance needs to go down for fuel economy. That has improved in the last 40 years over what it was," Potts said.

For many, the industry seems to hinge upon, and circle back toward, sustainability.

"It comes down to the sustainability of rubber," Potts said. "It goes to finding alternate materials—the rubber tree plant is a fragile beast, wiped out in South America and now being grown in Southeast Asia. We need all the rubber we can get from that. This will kill the world economy—not just tires, the world runs on rubber.

"The Russian dandelion, the guayule plant—chemists will need to find a substitute for rubber."

Industry 4.0 and predictive maintenance

Known as a "smart factory," Industry 4.0 is the implementation of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things and cloud computing—all technologies being employed along just about every stopping point on the rubber industry supply chain.

While the first Industrial Revolution brought steam power and the mechanization of production, the second revolution used electric power to create mass production. The third iteration—in which the world still finds itself—uses electronics and information technology to automate production.

And Industry 4.0 is building on the third.

Tami Willard, product manager with Continental A.G.'s industrial air springs division, said the company's recent release of the smart air spring system using its "HPTA Sensor" technology is one example of an Industry 4.0 innovation.

"In these cases, Continental air springs are used as actuators to transmit a load or force. Or they are used as vibration isolators," Willard said. "However, not until now could air springs communicate digitally (with four different parameters)."

With the HPTA system, customers can glean analytics on air spring height, pressure, temperature and acceleration, as the kit includes a sensor that allows the air spring to act as a node to provide data online, via a hard wire connection to a CPU.

"This results in communication between the air spring and the machine controller or operator, enabling them to upgrade their processes to Industry 4.0," Willard said. "Customers now have interconnectivity, capability for machine logging and real-time data—all of which result in lower maintenance costs (predictive maintenance), reduced shutdowns and enhanced employee safety."

Sensor data is a basic requirement for many active and passive applications, according to Sebastian Rittig, head of sales in Conti's Motion and Suspension Solutions segment. The height signal, for example, is an important variable for active and load-independent level control.

"With some of our tractors for agricultural applications, every component in the machine is communicating and reporting back—every teeny, tiny component. I think (it) is where the whole industry is pointing at," Rittig said.

In addition, all air spring data can be recorded and evaluated as part of continuous condition monitoring. For instance, if the height of an air spring regularly deviates from the set value at constant load, this indicates a compressed air leakage in the system.

Although not immediately noticeable, this can lead to unnecessary consumption of compressed air and energy. The other measured variables also come with alarm thresholds, so that deviations from normal operations are detected immediately.

The measurement values provided by the sensors can be used to calculate other variables such as oscillation amplitudes, vibration frequencies or the weight on the air spring.

"All this information helps companies to operate their installations safely and efficiently," said Manuel Mosich, director of development of the HPTA sensor at Continental. "With integrated sensor technology, we give our customers the opportunity to digitally map their processes in order to make them future-proof."

A brief history of automation

Ninety percent of transportation around the world is powered by petroleum, and the only sector that converts more is energy generation.

Of the main sources of energy, petroleum remains king, with natural gas consumption recently surpassing coal for second place. Nuclear, biomass and wind energy follow, according to statistics from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

And last year, transportation passed electric power in greenhouse gas emissions at 29 percent to 28 percent. Within transportation, light duty vehicles generated 29 percent of GHG.

All of this means that the evolution of automated functions in passenger vehicles is critical to the environment and the pocketbook.

Early and still essential anti-lock braking and traction control automations gave way to second-generation technologies such as driver warning systems and comfort functions, as well as adaptive cruise control.

Today this automation progression continues with collision mitigation, while level 3 automation tends to use the most state-of-the-art drivetrains, power sources and software to achieve optimal fuel efficiency in vehicles.

Level 5 automation could bring the first truly autonomous vehicle that can be driven hands-free, even human-free.

Nanotechnology and sustainability

It wasn't until 1991 when the theory of nanotechnology was propelled into existence by Japanese researcher Sumi Iijima, working with NEC Corp., with the discovery of the nanotube—a carbon-based filler that offers exceptional performance improvements in electrical conductivity, strength and other characteristics.

While some in the nanotechnology field believe carbon nanotubes—essentially graphene, nano-scale tubes of single-atom layer thickness or multiple layers wrapped to form a hollow core, comprised of carbon—may someday stand alone as the optimal performance additive in both tire and non-tire elastomers, others see a hybrid of CNT and carbon black as the filler of the future.

Krupp of Molecular Rebar Design said CNTs "are another ingredient in the cupboard, allowing formulators and compounders to expand the magic triangle of performance properties."

"Carbon nanotubes, in general, should be viewed as the next reinforcing filler of choice for many applications," Krupp said. "They can be used to replace carbon black and maybe silica in tires; they can be used as an electrically conductive and reinforcing filler in lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries; and they can work alongside typical fillers like carbon black and graphite."

And Krupp said the growing interest in green sources of raw materials for the rubber industry "will necessitate some technological shifts."

"Currently the dominant idea seems to be to 'close the loop' with materials gathered from end-of-life tires," Krupp said. "Some of the most hyped recycled materials include recycled carbon black. From what I understand, some sources of recycled carbon blacks have adoption concerns focused on the surface structure of the carbon itself, frequently a result of the pyrolysis process."

This altered, often highly graphitic structure results in differing resultant rubber compound properties as compared to those using virgin carbon black.

"There are two ways to solve these overarching recycled material performance issues: alter the recycling processes, or produce virgin materials from renewable sources of feedstocks," Krupp said. "I believe the rubber industry, and particularly the consumer-facing tire industry, will shift away from 'closing the loop' with a sacrifice in performance toward renewably and sustainably produced virgin materials in the long term.

"Closing the loop by using recycled materials for non-technical goods like floor mats, mulch and the like will continue to be performed, but the highly engineered nature of tires requires high-performing materials that are freshly produced."

As such, Molecular Rebar Design is eyeing sustainably produced sources of carbon nanotubes for its existing product lines.

"We also believe that the surface of carbon, and carbon nanotubes specifically, can be altered to provide further benefits, supplanting silica as the functionalized filler of choice for high performance spaces, such as electric vehicle tires," Krupp said.

Conversely, Bridgestone spearheaded efforts from a triumverate of heavy hitters in developing Techsyn, a potential game-changer in the tire industry from a sustainability and operational perspective.

Techsyn, to be released initially in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, India and Africa, combines optimized synthetic rubber (specifically an SSBR compound) with highly engineered silica. The two entities meet and interact at the molecular level and the result is a tire that "delivers unrivaled strength and environmental performance with no tradeoffs."

Among the compound's virtues are lower fuel consumption and reduced CO2 emissions, according to Bridgestone.

Bridgestone; Maastricht, Netherlands-based Arlanxeo; and Brussels, Belgium-based Solvay S.A. formed a partnership in establishing the compound.

Medical movement

It appears that there may be coming developments for plastic films for use in the medical field, according to Gael Peron, vice president of medical device testing with Akron-based Smithers.

Thermoplastic elastomers brought the ability to conduct tube-to-tube fusing, allowing suppliers to make sterile connections.

"With cell therapies becoming more prominent, there will be incentives to respond to extreme conditions, such as liquid nitrogen storage," Peron said of the rapidly changing medical environment.

A European initiative to reduce drastically the use of plastic might also open the door to innovations in reusable elastomers.

"This points to another large question for the industry, though," Peron said. "Sustainability remains a hot topic and certain laws and regulations will ensure that it continues to be discussed at length. We have been working with customers on the potential use of recycled elastomers in the medical and pharmaceutical spaces.

"As you would expect, the challenges are significant due to the strict regulatory environment that oversees the materials used in medical and pharmaceutical applications."

 

Software advances

Predictive maintenance is not always applied in the literal sense, with physical sensors measuring analytics in real time.

While the simulation space as a whole is very competitive, there are fewer firms that have Endurica's focus on durability of rubber parts.

"The competition we face always is some kind of internal group," Mars said. "We've displaced internal codes when people take a look at what we're doing and maybe do a validation. Our technology stacks up pretty well against what people have tried to do in-house."

Looking ahead, Mars said activity involving the integration of electronics, computations and internet connectivity will involve the use of rubber products.

C+ Technologies is Continental's arm for integrated sensor technology as the manufacturer looks to the coming decades. The aforementioned HPTA sensor used in conjunction with industrial air springs is a development of this division.

Under C+ Technologies, the company is developing new solutions, "making standard products smart," as Willard might say, for future air spring applications in the industrial sector.

These include reduced bellows volumes to increase energy efficiency and sustainability; special materials for greater safety; and smart "big data" applications that make sensor-based collection more effective.

"The air spring has been around as a product since the 1960s," Willard said. "C+ is to make sure we are still around in the coming centuries. We want to ensure that in any changing environment in the industry, that the air spring has done its part."

Between Industry 4.0 and predictive maintenance, software innovations and sustainability processes, AI and automation, it is clear that the lone constant in the rubber industry for the foreseeable future will be change itself.

Bruce Meyer, Rubber News Staff, contributed to this story.