Researchers at the Extension Center are studying a dandelion whose roots could one day produce tires that can withstand the weight of a 747.
Rich Roseberg, who oversees operations at Oregon State University’s Southern Oregon Research & Extension Center, and his associates are working with teams from Ohio State University and the University of Nebraska to produce a natural rubber suitable for aviation and Defense Department purposes from a dandelion native to Kazakhstan.
If they’re successful, the Russian dandelion could help the U.S. ease its dependence on Asian rubber, Roseberg says.
Chemists have labored a century attempting to produce synthetic rubber from petroleum to match natural rubber, Roseberg said. As a result, passenger car tires can be made of 25 percent natural rubber and 75 percent synthetic rubber, but an aircraft tire has to be 100 percent natural rubber.
“Think about a tire that has been motionless at minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit and then it hits the runway,” he said. “In that instant, there’s not only the weight stress, but temperatures rising to several degrees at the moment of impact.”
As a result, tire companies as varied as Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Cooper Tire & Rubber and Continental AG have backed rubber dandelion research.
“We simply have to have a steady supply of natural rubber to produce aircraft tires,” Roseberg said. “You cannot land a modern airplane on tires made from synthetic rubber, made from petroleum, it has to be from natural rubber currently extracted from the Brazilian rubber tree.”