Ogden Leading $70M Project for Renewable Rubber Products
CHEE Department Chair Kim Ogden is leading a project to turn a hardy desert shrub into an alternative source of natural rubber. As principal investigator on a $70 million, five-year project, Ogden is teaming up with Bridgestone Americas Inc. to grow and process guayule for use in tires and other rubber products.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture granted $35 million for the project, with an equal match from Bridgestone, the tire and rubber company, to help growers transition to guayule crops from their traditional rotations of hay, cotton and wheat.
“It's natural rubber so essentially when you extract it from a solvent, you actually get rubber that you can make things out of like tires. That’s why Bridgestone is so interested in it," Ogden told KGUN9.
Bridgestone has been working with guayule in Arizona since 2012 at the company's 280-acre farm in Eloy, about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. Bridgestone plans to expand the farm to 20,000 acres in the next several years by working with Native American farmers to grow guayule on tribal lands, and with other area farmers.
"Eventually, we hope to have plantings of around 100,000 acres, spread out across 15 or 20 facilities across the Southwest," said David Dierig, section manager for agro operations at Bridgestone.
Rubber is currently sourced from a single species – Hevea brasilensis, or the para rubber tree –grown almost exclusively in Southeast Asia.
Having a single source for rubber globally means the supply of this critical material can be precarious and subject to market volatility. The para rubber tree crop is susceptible to disease, particularly leaf fall disease. In addition, the price of rubber is affected by increasing labor costs, and there is the potential for geopolitical disorder, Ogden said.
“We want to use less water, install irrigation systems to avoid flood irrigation, use less fertilizer and educate the growers,” Ogden told the Arizona Daily Star. “If you’re looking at a big-system, life-cycle assessment, this is going to cut down on greenhouse gases.”