Tire wear causes massive pollution... now what?

[Frank Lee]

More alternatives:



Low Crr!

[RedDevil]

^^ Need big wheels if you gotta push them horses

[gone-ot]

Love it! Does this mean that Fiat-Chrysler is going to resurrect STUDEBAKER (ha,ha) ? ? ? ?


...and offer an "Amish" version Jeep?

[Xist]

At drill, we were moving a truck with a load and the rear tires were leaving tread marks on the pavement. Were they somehow dragging? What else could cause that?

Sooner or later, the rubber deposited on the concrete will wear off and scurry along Balto's floorboards when he is trying to sleep.

[RedDevil]

Polyurethane tires look very promising; see Will Polyurethane Replace Rubber for Tires? - Tom Dwyer Automotive and http://www.thomasnet.com/articles/pl...silicone-tires

Polyurethane tires will rub off loads of plastic microparticles. But - those would be polyurethane microparticles. And that matters.

As polyurethane is quite inert. So much so that it is the first choice for baby toys, pacifiers, etc.
I was looking for possible health hazards from PU microparticles but found hardly anything.
Now why is that?

This study Microplastics in the Marine Environment: A Review of the Methods Used for Identification and Quantification - ResearchGate grouped the results of other studies, listing what plastic types have been identified how often in those studies marine pollution samples.
The majority of studies found polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene.
Just one (out of 42) found polyurethane.

The properties (also listed in the above link) reveal why.
PE and PP are lighter than water, so they float in the surface layer and remain there when they break down to microscopic size. Polystyrene is just about as heavy as salt water, but is most used in foam. It floats until it breaks down.
PU is heavier than even salt water. It would sink to the bottom rapidly. It will deposit on the bottom of the wastewater channels and wherever the roads drain to. It won't float out to sea.

Those deposits do get polluted by PU particles, but that would be a relatively confined and concentrated pollution - by an inert material. Those deposits are most likely already heavily polluted anyway.
So not much harm done there, I guess?

Just the cost to worry about.
PU motor and shock mounts last longer than their rubber counterparts, but are not widely used because they are more expensive.
Would a set of PU tires be affordable enough to make them worthwhile?

[gone-ot]

Asbestos ONCE was a wonderful product, too.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

Asbestos ONCE was a wonderful product, too.

Just like we had to stop using asbestos, we may one day be forced to change tires too.

I'll just drop this here. Where there's smoke there's fire.

[freebeard]

RedDevil -- I have high hopes for your thread. I'm back where I can copy/paste and type with more than one finger.

The article I'd looked at is:

<<Tires: Urethane v. Silicone>>

It talks about polyurethane's problem, traction. It's an undated article, but states a farm implement tire was introduced that May. It also mentions organosilanes.

The first I ever heard about polyurethane tires was in an article in Popular Mechanix Illustrated some years ago. It played up the low capital investment and said manufacturing would be local on the scale of a re-capping shop and they'd make your tires on demand.

[redneck]

.

News regarding Polyurethane tires. Dated 7/22/2015.


http://www.rubbernews.com/article/20...pneumatic-tire

The tire maker said it has put the iFlex through a serious of rigorous tests designed to push the tires to their limits in five categories: durability, hardness, stability, slalom and speed. In the speed test, the electric car equipped with iFlex tires reached 81 mph. The results in all five categories demonstrated that the NPTs could match conventional tires in terms of performance, Hankook claims.

>

[freebeard]

Ross Lovegrove did a car for Renault. He does bio-mimicry. His wheel is like:


DesignApplause | Renault x ross lovegrove. Milan 2013.

That may be a rubber tire, but he does chairs that have veining and ribs like a leaf. That's probably not manufacturable yet.