Cooper Tire completes guayule grant

FINDLAY, Ohio—Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. and its consortium partners have completed their five-year, $6.9 million Biomass Research and Development Initiative grant on guayule rubber.

Cooper scientists—working with Clemson University, Cornell University, PanAridus and the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—produced several sets of concept passenger car tires in which all the natural and synthetic rubber is replaced by guayule natural rubber.

Guayule is a shrub grown primarily in the Southwestern U.S. containing rubber that can be processed for use in tires. The grant team studied the feasibility of using guayule in tires verses Hevea natural rubber used in the industry today and sourced primarily from Southeast Asia.

Cooper said it built more than 450 tires replacing Hevea and synthetic rubber with guayule and tested each for overall performance. Through this process, the firm created what it claimed is the industry's first all-guayule concept tires and conducted rigorous lab and road tests that provided verifiable performance results.

"Based on our findings, Cooper could use guayule rubber in tire production tomorrow if enough material was available to meet our production needs at a competitive price," Chuck Yurkovich, Cooper's senior vice president of global research and development, said in a statement. "To make this happen, the combined effort of government, agriculture and industry is needed to grow the plants and create large-scale manufacturing operations to produce the rubber for use in the tire industry."

Clemson University conducted a life cycle analysis to quantify the environmental impact of producing tires from guayule and found that 100 percent guayule-based tires had between 6 percent and 30 percent lower emissions in 10 different life cycle environmental and energy impact categories compared to a conventional tire.

PanAridus, Cooper said, was able to manufacture guayule rubber in qualities never before achieved through improved strains of the plant. Cooper also partnered with PanAridus to improve the rubber extraction process from guayule plants.

"The results of this grant have been groundbreaking," Yurkovich added. "Never before has it been proven that guayule is a viable source of domestically produced natural rubber for the tire industry. However, through the combined effort of industry, government and academia, the BRDI team has unequivocally demonstrated just that."