Bridgestone’s ‘high strength rubber’ wins environmental award

Hanover, Germany – Bridgestone Corp.’s high strength rubber’ (HSR) has won the "environmental achievement of the year" accolade at the Tire Technology International Awards, held earlier this month.

“This new polymer will drastically reduce the consumption of raw materials and energy,” said Toshio Nishi, emeritus professor at University of Tokyo and Tokyo Institute of Technology and member of the judging panel.

The “new approach to high-strength rubber”, he went on to say, will be extremely useful in the future.

The Japanese tire & rubber company announced the hybrid-polymer breakthrough in May last year.

HSR combines rubber and resin at the molecular level and is claimed to have strength and abrasion resistance “that eclipse those of natural rubber.”

The rubber, is described as a hybrid material: bonding synthetic-rubber components such as butadiene and isoprene, with resin components such as ethylene at the molecular level.

The production process uses Bridgestone’s proprietary gadolinium (Gd) catalyst via copolymerisation, the company announced May last year.

Target applications, noted Bridgestone, include future tires with higher performance and less material than to current tires.