Bridgestone, LanzaTech partnership works toward circular economy

HILTON HEAD, S.C.—The agreement Bridgestone Americas Inc. signed with LanzaTech NZ Inc. to pursue end-of-life tire recycling technologies is the first step toward what one day can be part of a truly circular economy.

That first step is building a technology that works, while the second step—which can be a bit trickier—is building a viable business case to push the know-how forward.

"There is a lot of core technology on the LanzaTech side that is necessary to make that work from a technical case," said Bill Niaura, Bridgestone Americas director of sustainable materials and circular economy. "From a business case, Bridgestone's presence in the market and how we participate is a strength. We have our own dealer network, we have partners in the recycling space and the tire distribution space."

The two companies will co-develop a dedicated end-of-life tire recycling process leveraging LanzaTech's proprietary CCT technology, creating a pathway toward tire-material circularity and the decarbonization of new tire production, Bridgestone said.

Bridgestone and Skokie, Ill.-based LanzaTech said they will work to convert scrap tires into new materials, including exploring processes to create sustainable synthetic rubber that does not rely on petrochemicals.

Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

"The steps we take today are determining the health of our planet for future generations," Paolo Ferrari, president and CEO of Nashville, Tenn.-based Bridgestone Americas, said at the time the deal was announced. "We are determined to meet the moment with sustainable innovation that transforms the way tires are made and promotes end-to-end material circularity," he said.

LanzaTech transforms waste carbon into materials such as sustainable fuels, fabrics, packaging and other products. The company said its goal is to challenge and change the way the world uses carbon, enabling a new circular carbon economy where carbon is reused rather than wasted.

"LanzaTech and Bridgestone are working together to find solutions to some of our world's greatest challenges," LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren said in a statement. "We have already proven that we can convert unrecyclable, unsorted municipal solid waste to ethanol and then make products we use in our daily lives. With our partnership with Bridgestone, we are developing a circular pathway to use tires to make tires. This partnership exemplifies what we call a 'post-pollution' future."

Bridgestone and LanzaTech have worked together in the past, starting with a collaboration on the tire maker's research into guayule as a potential alternative natural rubber, Niaura told Rubber News in an interview at the Clemson University Tire Industry Conference in Hilton Head.

"When you work with partners and have good technological interchange, new ideas arise," he said. "We had the insight into the fact that there is an opportunity around end-of-life tires. There is (a) large amount of tires that are sub-optimal, and we can bring a better sustainable solution toward that. It began with the technology collaboration validating that we can make this work technically."

Knowing the dynamics of what happens with ELTs and how to tap into where the opportunity lies is vital in developing a reason to believe that the venture the two firms are working on can become a true business rather than just a technology project.

"There are a lot of things that work at the bench top chemistry scale and at the pilot scale," Niaura said. "But really making that a scaled solution that impacts an industry is a bigger team and it's a whole different challenge.

"When you get to the point where it can be a business, it can be in more than one facility. It can be a solution for the industry, and even across industries."

The Bridgestone executive said the LanzaTech technology is "kind of omnivorous" to carbon and not specific to feedstock. "As long as you can gasify it and it's got carbon in it, it's an appropriate feedstock," he said, "whether it's residual biomasses or industrial off-gases, or tires or post-consumer waste."

Bridgestone and LanzaTech will seek to develop a business model that will create a post-consumer waste management strategy for end-of-life tires, while also driving increased adoption of sustainably sourced chemicals for commercial applications.

Applying LanzaTech's carbon-capture and gas fermentation process to end-of-life tires yields sustainably produced chemicals such as ethanol, which can be converted to materials such as polyethylene for packaging, polyester yarn and surfactants used in consumer home goods like laundry detergent, the company said.

Niaura said the work is in the project development phase, and he expects to see something operating at scale by the end of the decade.

"This is a partnership on a lot of technical vetting," he said. "We've actually done this. In my office, I have a liter of tire-derived alcohol. We haven't yet converted it into butadiene. It's ethanol."

And making butadiene is one of the ultimate objectives of this partnership. Niaura sees it largely as a two-step process. The first focuses on solving the end-of-life tire problem. The existing microbe that LanzaTech has deployed at scale makes ethanol, and there are many demonstrated pathways, he added, that take ethanol to butadiene.

"The world, in the past, has made production volumes of butadiene from ethanol. That technology is sound. It's building the business case around that," Niaura said.

Of course, the technology road isn't always a straight line. He said one of the beauties of the LanzaTech process is the researchers are continually developing the microbe to make other chemicals that may be even more efficient intermediate molecules toward making butadiene.

There's also a location perspective to the equation. ELTs are everywhere, and in some cases, it may make sense to produce ethanol from the tires, particularly when close to an industrial or transportation use. Other places, Niaura said, when close to synthetic rubber manufacturing, the step to butadiene may be the preferred pathway.

"In all these things, it's the business case part that's tough because it does cost money and creates a carbon footprint when you're moving feedstock around," he said. "That needs to be considered. If I'm making sustainable rubber from this, it's got to be a low-carbon butadiene. The business case is intimately intertwined with that."

Whether it's recapturing carbon, or developing alternative forms of natural rubber, Bridgestone's main goal is to have the greatest impact on the tire and rubber industry—in other words, "move the needle," Niaura said.

"We are on the cusps of these things," he said. "They're going to happen. They're not easy problems to solve."

Niaura also emphasized that the work with LanzaTech may help solve part of the ELT problem, but won't replace existing technologies such as rubberized asphalt.

"I think there is space for all of these solutions," he said. "This is not a competition. It's an attempt to solve a problem that is huge."

The Bridgestone executive can imagine someday an industrial complex where, on one end, you take in biomass and, through a number of unit operations, you produce everything the tire industry needs.

"I can make carbon black. I can make synthetic rubber. I can make fibers," Niaura said. "Theoretically we could do it, but right now we can't afford that or justify anybody to invest that money in it."

Until that time, the work is ongoing at different locations. As with many modern collaborations, some is done at LanzaTech sites, while other parts are done in Bridgestone labs. Syn-gas is made out of tires at one place. That is then bottled and taken somewhere else for fermentation. Then you take the ethanol somewhere else and convert it into butadiene.

For Bridgestone, it's part of the Sustainable Solutions Business that is now in place. For sustainability goals, Bridgestone—like many firms—has targeted 2050 as the year it wants to be carbon neutral and make tires from 100-percent renewable materials. But Niaura said there also are goals built in along the way, with many expected to be completed by 2030.

He said the pathway begins with the critical raw materials, and everything that is believed possible, along with the technologies to underlie that. This is where it becomes clear which firms—both traditional along with newcomers—may be identified as potential partners.

At some point, procurement becomes involved, and the question of whether the new materials can be supplied evolves over time.

"I think we're starting to see our existing supply base take this transition to sustainable materials seriously," Niaura said. "They're engaged, and we're going to co-create some solutions."

Bridgestone sees this as the next phase of its evolution. He said Bridgestone 1.0 was the founding of the corporation as a tire manufacturer in Japan. Bridgestone 2.0 started with the purchase of Firestone and Bandag, making Bridgestone into a global player.

And now Bridgestone 3.0 represents a transition to a sustainable company.

That has two phases. One is the digitization of tires and how different service models can deliver sustainability by optimizing tires; and its use phase for retreading and final use.

Niaura said Bridgestone has been putting money behind this next phase, through such moves as the acquisition of the Telematics Division of Tom Tom, now rebranded as Web Fleet Solutions. It also has taken minority investments in a host of companies.

"Every tire does in fact come to an end, and (Sustainable Business Solutions) sees how we can make something that is good for society and for business," he said. "How can we leverage our presence in the marketplace to make this yet another piece of our business?"

Bridgestone's partnership with LanzaTech aligns with the Bridgestone E8 Commitment that serves as the axis to drive management to earn the trust of future generations. The commitment consists of eight Bridgestone values that start with the letter "E," and the work with LanzaTech falls under both the "Ecology" and "Energy" values.

Other values include Efficiency, Extension, Economy, Emotion, Ease and Empowerment.