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In the near future, Austin Foot-
wear Labs’ Tredagain game-changing
technology is going to be everywhere
due, in part, to the large-scale prob-
lem this technology addresses. The
issue here is the appropriate disposal
of post-consumer and industrial rub-
ber waste. More specifically but not
limited to, a landscape littered with
used automobile and truck tires.
Until now, there has been no cost-
effective, scalable and non-environ-
mentally egregious method to handle
pre- or post-consumer or industrial
rubber waste. The reason is, once
batches of rubber are created, they
are virtually impossible to separate
back into the original components.
That limits rubber’s reusability or re-
cyclability. This chemical impasse, in
some measure, can be attributed to a
one Charles Goodyear.
Goodyear, an impoverished
inventor, tenaciously worked on
improving gum rubber even during
stints in debtor’s prison. He saw the
material’s upside potential despite
its two well-known flaws. During
the summer, gum rubber products
would morph into glue-like blobs
and in the winter turn to inflexible
stone. Undeterred by setback after
setback, he utilized his engineering
savvy from manufacturing agricul-
tural implements and his auto-didac-
tic approach to solve problems befit-
ting a chemist. The year was 1839
and as with many notable discover-
ies, the solution was found accidently,
but not according to Goodyear. In any
event, adding sulfur and heat to the
gum dramatically changed its physical
characteristics to what we now take
for granted.
The process of adding sulfur and
heat, later named vulcanization by
one of Goodyear’s competitors, is what
makes rubber so difficult to recycle
or reduce back to simple compounds.
Think of it like baking a cake. When the
cake finally comes out of the baking
pan, there are always crumbs remaining
in the pan. However, like rubber, those
crumbs cannot be gathered together
and reduced back to flour, sugar, butter,
baking powder, eggs, salt and milk.
That is not to say individuals have
not attempted to do so. During the
years, there have been efforts to uti-
lize waste rubber from tires and other
waste-stream rubber with limited
success. Yet it took another accident,
this time by a professor and research
engineer at Kansas State University,
to unlock the devulcanization code.
Liang-tseng (LT) Fan, distinguished
professor at KSU, and Shahram R.
Shafie, a veteran process/chemical
Rubber
Cycles Up
Austin Footwear Labs wants you to leave a better footprint
By
Ernest
Shiwanov
Tired of tire waste, Austin Footwear Labs and Tredagain sandals are
reconstructing rubber
APX, 100% devulcanized rubber ready to be
added or upcycled into a rubber master batch
as virgin rubber (image courtesy of Tredagain).
Inside
Outdoor
|
Spring
2016
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