On Wednesday, December 6, Michelin, the CNRS, and Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA) officially opened the joint research laboratory BioDLab, which is devoted to the study of tyre rubber degradation and biodegradation. Its goals include developing technological solutions to address the environmental problems related to wear particles that arise from the interaction of the tire and the road, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the process of tyre degradation caused by tire use.
The four-year joint research laboratory’s goal is to create instruments for identifying workable ways to make wear particles environmentally bioassimilable.
Tyres must first and foremost adhere to the road in order to ensure driver safety, which causes erosion and wear particles. These particles combine to form a complex mixture for which many chemical phenomena are still unknown, particularly with regard to how they change over time in response to water and sunlight.
This new partnership between the CNRS, Michelin, and UCA aims to develop techniques to evaluate elastomer degradation, a crucial component of tires, at the intersection of materials science, chemistry, and microbiology. It also produces a thorough analysis that provides insight into the mechanisms at play.
More precisely, the study will concentrate on the relationship between the photo- and/or thermochemical process that breaks down diene elastomers, or tire rubber, and the biodegradation of these materials by either overexpressed enzymes1 or isolated or consortium microorganisms. It will be possible to better understand the physicochemical reactions at work by conducting a thorough analysis and developing assessment methods for the different degradation processes.
