NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Bridgestone America Inc.'s exploration of more sustainable materials has earned it a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.
The funding—the amount of which was not disclosed—will support the tire maker's efforts to design, build and operate a pilot plant to obtain butadiene from ethanol in a more sustainable and cost-effective way. Bridgestone will study the feasibility of using the more sustainably sourced butadiene in its tires.
"Projects like this will help advance the science and technologies necessary to make the industry more sustainable, placing our engineers and scientists at the forefront of potentially revolutionizing how tire makers obtain butadiene in a more nature-positive way," Mark Smale, Bridgestone executive director of core polymer science, said in a statement. "We are very excited about this project and the innovative new process, and very appreciative of the DOE's support."
Bridgestone's three-year study launches this month. During the first year, the tire maker will design its pilot plant, which it intends to build in Akron during the second year. The plant is scheduled to come online in the third year.
Bridgestone has partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which originally developed the proprietary catalyst system utilized for the project.
"It is this unique catalyst combined with Bridgestone's innovative process engineering that holds the promise of establishing a commercially viable new way of thermochemically converting ethanol to butadiene," the tire maker said in a news release.
Should the project yield the results that Bridgestone believes it can, the impact, the tire maker noted, could be significant. As the No. 1 fossil-fuel-based ingredient in tires' synthetic rubber, the replacement of butadiene with a more sustainable source is critical, particularly as Bridgestone looks to achieve 100-percent sustainable materials in its tires by 2050.
"The goal of this project is to assess, and hopefully prove, the economic viability of deriving butadiene from ethanol conversion versus fossil fuel conversion," Bridgestone said. "If the economics prove viable, then low carbon intensity ethanol (or ethanol derived from bio-based or recycled materials) could replace the use of fossil fuels in the process to obtain butadiene."