Goodyear innovation grows with soybeans

AKRON—Success grows from innovation. And innovation, it turns out, is one of North America's most abundant resources, growing in the form of soybeans on farms across the continent.

That's good news for Goodyear, which has established itself as a leader in the innovative use of soybean oils, using them to replace petrochemical-derived oils in tire tread compounds.

"Goodyear wants to be an innovation leader in the industry, and we were really first in this area," Goodyear Chief Engineer Bob Woloszynek said of the company's strides with soybean oil development. "Part of it was our ability to really figure out the unique properties of soybean oil to give us a performance advantage. That is how it got into our products."

And not just any products.

"This (soybean oil) technology is ending up in our premium products in rather significant levels," Woloszynek told Rubber News. " … And they are significant replacements. It's not that we are taking lower-tier or a mid-tier product and doing partial replacements. We are making this part of our product development."

Goodyear, in May, took another major step forward on its product development journey, unveiling its first commercial tire offerings that employ significant amounts of soybean oil within the tread compounds—the Metro Miler G152 and G652 for bus fleets, and the Endurance WHA waste-haul tire.

For the Metro Milers, specifically, Goodyear said it can use soybean oil to replace about 11 liquid ounces of free-flowing petroleum oil per tire. For a large city, one that maintains a fleet of 1,600 buses, the Metro Miler tires could account for 20 fewer barrels of oil used in the production of the tires fitted to those buses.

The Metro Miler G152 and G652 are rugged, designed to last longer with damage-resistant sidewalls. Reinforced shoulders also help deliver a long casing life, while the integrated sidewall wear indicators make it easier to spot wear due to excessive scuffing. The tread, meanwhile, is resistant to excessive wear, chunking, cracking and chipping.

The Endurance WHA, designed especially for waste haul vehicles, is set for production in the third quarter of 2022. The tire features a dual-layer tread compound to optimize treadwear, a deep 24/32-inch skid depth and optional built-in DuraSeal Technology that seals tread punctures to help reduce down time and avoid repairs and premature removal.

"We started in the tread compounds of passenger tires because that just fit with our development timelines," Woloszynek said of the soybean oil strides Goodyear has made. "To be able to move to the heavy tire segment and to, hopefully, expand the technology beyond the treads to where we start getting into the compounds that make up the casing components of a tire. That is an opportunity for us to expand the use of soybean oil and the impact that it has."

Goodyear really locked in on using soybean oil as a replacement for the petroleum-derived oils in its tire products around 2011, launching an R&D program in collaboration with the United Soybean Board.

Early on, the aim of the project was to gain a fundamental understanding of exactly what advantages soybean oils offered. But by 2015, Goodyear had developed and commercialized a polymer product that, within a short time, would prove essential to establishing a more sustainable tire portfolio.

Two years later, in 2017, Goodyear introduced its first tire to use significant amounts of soybean oil in the tread compound—the all-season Assurance WeatherReady. That tire, Woloszynek said, marked a significant achievement because it fully replaced the petroleum-based oils in the tread compound, resulting in a 60-percent reduction in the tire's overall petroleum oil usage when compared to its predecessor tires.

"We basically come out with one or two new products every single year since the launch of the Assurance WeatherReady," Woloszynek said. "I think that is a good way to show that we are on the right trajectory to eventually replace (all) the petroleum-based oils in our products (by 2040). It's a long-term goal, but we are well on our way to achieving it."

Since launching the Assurance WeatherReady tire, the Akron-based tire maker has introduced three more passenger car tires that include significant amounts soybean oils as replacements for the more traditional petrochemical-derived oils: the Goodyear Assurance ComfortDrive; Goodyear Eagle Exhilarate; and the Eagle Enforcer All Weather, a tire designed especially for first response and government vehicles.

When it comes to soybean oils, there's good reason for Goodyear's optimism.

"With the case of soybean oil, we were looking for it to contain similar properties to petroleum-based oil, namely, high-thermal stability and compatibility with the different synthetic rubbers or natural rubber that we use in our products," Woloszynek said. "What we actually found out was that soybean oil mixes better with the polymers that we use in our tire products. So that, right there, was already a significant advantage."

Soybean oils also provided processing benefits that could result in increased throughput at manufacturing facilities or reduced energy savings.

But one of the greatest advantages was the opportunity to take performance and sustainability even further with additional material science and product development.

"We don't need as much (soybean oil) to get the same level of processing that we need in order to make our products," Woloszynek said. "That gives us a lot more flexibility in that recipe to utilize other raw material technologies that could allow us to further enhance performance."

There's also a great benefit to the availability of soybeans and soybean oils, making the product an ideal resource for tires developed and made in and for the North American region.

Soybeans—second only to corn as a cash crop in the U.S.—are grown for their protein. About 18-20 percent of each bean is oil, so when soybeans are crushed to extract the protein, a large amount of oil results as a coproduct.

And when you consider just how many soybeans are grown annually in the U.S., the availability of the soybean oils is staggering, Woloszynek said.

"Even when you factor in all of the potential food applications for soybean oil, there is a significant surplus of that oil that comes as a coproduct," Woloszynek said. "These beans are not being grown so that Goodyear can use the soybean oil. The soybean oil is already there. And that is significant access."

The proof, he said, is a matter of simple math.

"In the United States, farmers grow over 4 billion bushels of soybeans a year—and a bushel is 60 pounds so that's 250 billion pounds. And 20 percent of that is 50 billion pounds of oil.

"And if two-thirds of that is used for food applications, you have a significant surplus of oil. Tens of billions of pounds," Woloszynek said. "And they are looking for high value uses. Because, as with any oil, it can be burned as fuel source. But if we are able to take that and find a higher-value use for it, it is a win-win. Not only for Goodyear, but for farmers across this country."

Goodyear has some lofty sustainability goals, among them is developing a tire made from 100 percent sustainable materials by 2030 and eliminating the use of petroleum oils in its products by 2040.

And with soybean oils at the center of those efforts—at least in North America—the tire maker is going to need as much of that soybean oil as it can get.

"The fact that it's a sustainable material technology, that's fine, but it's bringing a performance benefit to Goodyear," Woloszynek said. "So it is enabling us to continue delivering the products that set us apart and meet the demands of customers."