Reducing road pollution

It's hardly news that cars cause pollution. However, while most people probably think of exhaust emissions, a new UK start-up is working on another problem area: particle pollution from tyre wear.

The Tyre Collective, which was founded in London in 2020, has developed an award-winning device that can be mounted behind each wheel. While the vehicle is in motion, the device collects the rubber and plastic microparticles that come off the tyre. Tyre Collective co-founder and chief scientific officer, Siobhan Anderson, told Tire Technology International: "Every time we accelerate, brake or corner, tyre dust enters our waterways, our food chain and the air we breathe. It's estimated that we eat about a credit card's worth of plastic every week."

Several studies show how serious the problem of tyre wear is. The Guardian recently reported that almost 2,000 times more particle pollution comes from tyres than out of the exhaust of modern cars, referring to data from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research. Andreas Stohl, who led the institute's study of non-exhaust emissions (including tyres and brakes), explained that an average tyre loses about four kilograms of microparticles over its lifetime.

Pollution from tyre wear will not be solved by the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), which can accelerate faster and, for the time being, tend to be heavier than equivalent petrol-powered vehicles. While exhaust emissions have become strictly regulated, non-exhaust emissions have not, and their relative contribution to road pollution has grown over the past couple of decades, as cars of all kinds have become bigger and heavier.

Collecting rubber and plastic

The Tyre Collective was created to meet this challenge. The start-up was on the Forbes "30 Under 30" list for manufacturing and industry in 2021. It began as a project by four British design and engineering students from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Those students are now its co-founders, and their patented device came from a key discovery: "The rubber particles coming off tyres become charged due to friction with the road," says co-founder Hugo Richardson. "This meant we could use an electrostatic precipitator to capture the particles, separating them from the airflow."

Powered by the vehicle itself, electrostatically charged copper plates capture 60 per cent of all airborne particles in tests. "The captured tyre particles are stored in a cartridge within the device, which can be removed and emptied during servicing," Anderson says. "The particles can be recycled in a variety of ways, such as in the outer soles of shoes, dyes and even in retreads."

The founders are working with tyre and vehicle manufacturers to optimize the device, which they hope to start selling in 2024. The plan is to begin by installing the device in fleet vehicles, as these are serviced regularly, making it easier to empty the cartridges, before eventually integrating it into new vehicles.