From flowers to tyres: A piece of rubber made from dandelion plants is seen at the Fraunhofer Institute in Muenster, Germany. – Reuters
The roadside flower often considered as a pest now has a bright future in the tyre industry.
Dutch biologist Ingrid van der Meer often meets with disbelief when she talks about her work on dandelions and how it could secure the future of road transport. The reaction is understandable, given most people regard the yellow flowers as pesky intruders in their gardens rather than a promising source of rubber for tyres.
“People just think of it as a horrible weed and ask how can you get enough material for tyres from just a small root,” says van der Meer. But it’s no joke. Her research team is competing with others across the world to breed a type of dandelion native to Kazakhstan whose taproot yields a milky fluid with tire-grade rubber particles in it.
Global tyre makers such as industry leaders Bridgestone Corp and Continental AG believe they are in for rich pickings and are backing such research to the tune of millions of dollars.
Early signs are good. A small-scale trial by a US research team found the dandelions delivered per-hectare rubber yields on a par with the best rubber tree plantations in Asia. So within a decade, rather than being a backyard bane like their wild cousins, the new flowers might be seen in neat rows in hundreds of thousands of acres across Europe and the US, where they can grow even in poor soil.
And they could have some interesting modifications. For instance, German researchers have bred the plants to grow to up to 30cm in height, dwarfing their backyard cousins. They are also developing the dandelions with upright rather than flat-growing leaves so harvesting machines have something to grab on to.
The tyre industry, which consumes about two-thirds of the world’s natural rubber, has long felt uneasy about its complete reliance on rubber tree tapping in a handful of Southeast Asian nations, which account for most of the US$25bil in annual natural-rubber output. More than 100 years since the invention of synthetic rubber from petrochemicals, global road and air traffic still depend on the unique properties of plant-based rubber, which to date cannot be replicated by man-made materials.
Passenger car tyres need to have a content of between 10% to 40% natural rubber to allow them to stay flexible at low temperatures and to keep tiny cracks from growing. Truck and aircraft tires need an even higher percentage.