Tofu, Veggie Burgers, and Now Tires? Soy Takes Over.

I suppose it all started with tofu, some three thousand years ago. Logically, soymilk, with its nine essential amino acids quickly followed. Many of us, as infants, were fed soy formula instead of milk. Now you can walk in to just about any major chain restaurant and find a veggie burger, made from soy. But the soy revolution has only really just begun. Soybeans are used to make paints, insulation, adhesives, inks, foam for seat cushions, and biodiesel, of course.

Is there anything that soy cannot do? Perhaps not. Scientists at Agricultural Research Service (ARS), a scientific research agency of the USDA, are experimenting with the use of defatted soy flour, to take the place of traditional petroleum based fillers that increase tensile strength and wear in tires.

• » See also: Is the Renault-Nissan Alliance Going in Two Different Electric Car Directions?
• » Get Gas 2.0 by RSS or sign up by email.

According to an article on the ARS website, the filler typically used in modern tire production is called carbon black, which according to Wikipedia, is produced by “the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products like FCC tar, coal tar, [and] ethylene cracking tar.”

The research so far indicates that while the “storage modulus” (a measure of elasticity) scores for tires made with soy filler are about twenty times greater than those of tires without filler, petroleum based fillers still score somewhat better.

While we won’t be able to do away with tires anytime soon (oh, where are the hovercrafts, jetpacks, and flying cars?), perhaps the use of soy in this manner could help loosen our dependence on petroleum products, and increase our ability to recycle the tires that we do use.

Image Credit: Manky Maxblack at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

Sources: Agricultural Research Service via BioBasedNews.com, Wikipedia

Tweet This Post