US Department of Energy
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DOE Grant Supports Bridgestone Innovation for Non-fossil-based Synthetic Rubber
Bridgestone Americas (Bridgestone) announced it received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office. Bridgestone will design, build and operate a pilot plant that will advance an innovative, potentially more sustainable and cost-effective approach to obtaining butadiene from ethanol. The project will evaluate the economic and commercial viability, as well as the carbon footprint, of converting ethanol to butadiene.
The company plans to utilize the butadiene produced to further study and confirm the potential use as a feedstock for raw materials in Bridgestone tires. Bridgestone has partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL, for this project. The process will utilize and scale an innovative and proprietary catalyst system originally developed by PNNL and further co-developed through research activities with Bridgestone. It is this unique catalyst combined with Bridgestone’s innovative process engineering that holds the promise of establishing a commercially viable new way of thermochemically converting ethanol to butadiene.