G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com

Eggshells and Tomato skins, Could this be your next Tire?

The Ohio State University took up a big challenge, how to replace a core component in tire manufacturing, Carbon Black! This important component of tire manufacturing was in surplus up till 10 years ago when the Chinese market for auto's took off. 

A reason tire prices have increased is due to a dwindling supply of carbon black. The Ohio State University took on this challenge to find a replacement that would accomplish 3 things: sustainability, reduced foreign oil and reduction of waste from landfills. Their website states that the food industry uses 100 Billions eggs a year and over 13 million tons of tomatoes. This would give them a new market to sell the waste into rather than a landfill. Tire companies would buy their eggshells and tomato skins from a known source.

Quoting the web site: “Fillers generally make rubber stronger, but they also make it less flexible,” Barrera said. “We found that replacing different portions of carbon black with ground eggshells and tomato peels caused synergistic effects—for instance, enabling strong rubber to retain flexibility.”

Katrina Cornish (left) and Cindy Barrera (right) examin ground tomato skins and eggshells, as well as samples of rubber.

Photos by Kenneth Chamberlain courtesy of The Ohio State University.

Original Story Here

I hate to tell you it already has been for years. 

I have heard old time Firestone banbury operators dumping all sorts of items from their lunch into the rubber mixers.

chicken bones, cigerettes, candy wrappers, pop cans etc.

these were the guys mixing rubber for the Firestone 500's.