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Michelin and Carbios on the road to sustainable tires

2021-05-04T17:05:38.484Z


FIGARO DEMAIN - The tire giant has joined forces with the young French green chemistry company to design tires made from biobased or recycled materials.


Michelin has decided to tackle a weight aberration: every year, 200 million end-of-life tires are scrapped on the planet.

The Bibendum has set itself the goal of manufacturing tires made from 100% biobased materials or made from recycled products by 2050. “

This will have an impact in particular on the way we design our tires, which will be made entirely from sustainable materials at that date, compared to 28% today and 40% in 2030,

”explains Florent Menegaux, Chairman of the Michelin group.

To achieve this, Michelin has in particular forged a partnership with Carbios, a young company from Auvergne specializing in the recycling of PET - polyethylene terephthalate - which has developed a technology for the enzymatic recycling of plastic waste into PET.

The world tire leader has tested and validated this technology for use in its tires.

A world first.

"

The monomers resulting from the Carbios process originating from colored or opaque plastic waste (bottles, flasks, etc.), once repolymerized in PET, have made it possible to obtain a high tenacity fiber meeting Michelin's requirements

", declared the two companies. A week ago.

Read also: Michelin wants to sharpen its margins by diversifying

The fiber obtained is of identical quality to a technical fiber made from virgin PET obtained from petroleum transformed on the same prototype facilities,” explain the two companies. This high tenacity polyester is particularly suitable for tires because of its breaking strength, endurance and thermal stability

 ”.

"We are very proud to be the first to have produced and tested technical fibers for use in tires, reinforcements made from colored bottles treated with the enzymatic technology of our partner Carbios," said

Nicolas Seeboth, director of the Polymers research at Michelin

.

These high-tech reinforcements have demonstrated their ability to provide performance identical to those from the oil industry ”.

For its part, Carbios plans to put its “

industrial demonstrator

into service in Clermont-Ferrand in September,

which should enable it to collect the data essential for the construction of its future PET recycling plant.

It could be built in Germany at the end of 2022 for entry into production two years later.

Read also: Discover the initiatives and actors of change on Figaro Demain

In recent months, Michelin has stepped up recycling projects. In February, the group announced that it had created a joint venture with Swedish company Enviro to build the first tire recycling plant in Chile. The plant will recycle 30,000 tonnes per year of civil engineering tires (mining activities and construction machinery), or 60% of end-of-life tires used in the country in these areas. Construction work is due to begin in 2021 for the plant to be commissioned in 2023. Enviro has patented a technology that makes it possible to produce, by transforming used tires, reusable materials such as carbon black and pyrolysis oil. , gas and steel. They "

will be 90% reintegrated into several types of rubber-based production: tires, conveyor belts, anti-vibration products

”, indicate the two companies. The remaining 10% “

will be recovered as energy used directly in the operation of the plant

 ”. It will be the first unit of the Michelin group to implement a complete recycling solution, from the collection of used tires to the integration of raw materials into the manufacturing process of new products.

Source: lefigaro

All business articles on 2021-05-04

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