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“Designing electrolytes to control electrochemical processes”

Chibueze Amanchukwu

“Maximizing CO2 capture in photosynthetic organisms”

Ahmed Badran

“Using abundant materials to make safer batteries”

Rachel Carter

“Driving enhanced tire sustainability and performance”

Rob Dennis-Pelcher

“Developing electrochemical tools to understand corrosion”

Samantha M. Gateman

“Therapeutically targeting structurally dynamic RNAs”

Alisha Jones

“Harnessing radiochemistry to investigate environmental pollutants”

Outi Keinänen

“Developing new approaches to oligonucleotide manufacturing”

Sarah Lovelock

Nominate for the T12 class of 2025

Nominations

“A path toward drugging the ‘undruggable’ ”

Jesus Moreno

“Innovating nanoscale biosensors for human health”

Nako Nakatsuka

“Discovering unknown metabolites with chemical AI”

Michael Skinnider

“Radical catalysis for sustainable synthesis”

Julian West

Register for the T12 Symposium

T12 Symposium

“Designing electrolytes to control electrochemical processes”

Chibueze Amanchukwu

“Maximizing CO2 capture in photosynthetic organisms”

Ahmed Badran

“Using abundant materials to make safer batteries”

Rachel Carter

“Driving enhanced tire sustainability and performance”

Rob Dennis-Pelcher

“Developing electrochemical tools to understand corrosion”

Samantha M. Gateman

“Therapeutically targeting structurally dynamic RNAs”

Alisha Jones

“Harnessing radiochemistry to investigate environmental pollutants”

Outi Keinänen

“Developing new approaches to oligonucleotide manufacturing”

Sarah Lovelock

“A path toward drugging the ‘undruggable’ ”

Jesus Moreno

“Innovating nanoscale biosensors for human health”

Nako Nakatsuka

“Discovering unknown metabolites with chemical AI”

Michael Skinnider

“Radical catalysis for sustainable synthesis”

Julian West

Nominate for the T12 class of 2025

Nominations

Register for the T12 Symposium

T12 Symposium

“Designing electrolytes to control electrochemical processes”

Chibueze Amanchukwu

“Maximizing CO2 capture in photosynthetic organisms”

Ahmed Badran

“Using abundant materials to make safer batteries”

Rachel Carter

“Driving enhanced tire sustainability and performance”

Rob Dennis-Pelcher

“Developing electrochemical tools to understand corrosion”

Samantha M. Gateman

“Therapeutically targeting structurally dynamic RNAs”

Alisha Jones

“Harnessing radiochemistry to investigate environmental pollutants”

Outi Keinänen

“Developing new approaches to oligonucleotide manufacturing”

Sarah Lovelock

“A path toward drugging the ‘undruggable’ ”

Jesus Moreno

“Innovating nanoscale biosensors for human health”

Nako Nakatsuka

“Discovering unknown metabolites with chemical AI”

Michael Skinnider

“Radical catalysis for sustainable synthesis”

Julian West

Nominate for the T12 class of 2025

Nominations

Register for the T12 Symposium

T12 Symposium
Dump truck icon
Tire icon
Blimp icon
Blimp icon
Tire icon
Headshot of Rob Dennis-Pelcher Headshot of Rob Dennis-Pelcher
Credit: Jessica Yanesh/ Goodyear Tire & Rubber
May 17, 2024 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 102, Issue 15
Consumer Products
“Driving
enhanced tire
sustainability
and performance”
Rob  Dennis-Pelcher

At Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s proving grounds in San Angelo, Texas, sports cars snake through cones on wet pavement, dump trucks rumble down dirt roads, and semitrailers coast down long tracks. Each year, the company puts about 20,000 tires through these tests to evaluate their traction, toughness, and fuel efficiency.

Vitals

Current affiliation: Goodyear Tire & Rubber

Age: 35

PhD alma mater: University at Buffalo

Hometown: Lyndonville, New York

If I were an element, I’d be: “Carbon. It is a key component in a variety of organic compounds that make up living organisms, oils, polymers, etc. And it can take on many different amorphous and crystalline forms, such as carbon black, carbon nanotubes, graphite, graphene, diamonds, and other advanced materials that all play so many important roles in our lives today.”

My favorite TV show is:Breaking Bad. I thought Bryan Cranston and all of the actors did such a good job with the story and the characters. I also appreciated Walter White’s knowledge of chemistry and his attention to detail and quality.”

Goodyear principal scientist Rob Dennis- Pelcher’s job is to identify a mix of tire materials that optimizes all these properties while decreasing the tire’s negative effects on the environment. It’s a difficult task. A modern tire might contain 20 components, including natural and synthetic polymers to form rubber, reinforcing fillers to increase strength, and additives to improve performance. “It’s really a balance of a lot of different factors,” says Dennis-Pelcher, who specializes in reinforcing filler materials like silica and carbon black.

Right now, many tire components are derived from petroleum, but Goodyear aims to produce a tire using all biobased, recycled, or otherwise sustainable materials by 2030. Dennis-Pelcher was part of a team that last year unveiled a demonstration tire made with 90% sustainable materials. The tire included carbon black derived from soybean oil and silica made from rice husks, among other materials. But tackling the other 10% of the tire’s ingredients—and ensuring a commercial version isn’t too expensive—will require an enormous amount of creativity.

“We use so much of these materials,” Dennis-Pelcher says. “Even if you develop a solution, getting it to scale and getting it to work across the board in all the applications we need can be quite complicated.”

Dennis-Pelcher scouts out ways to achieve these sustainability goals by talking with existing suppliers, identifying new collaborators with promising technologies, and scouring peer-reviewed papers and patents. In most cases, he can’t simply drop new materials into Goodyear’s manufacturing process. So he works with outside companies to refine their technologies and ensure their products won’t interfere with other tire chemicals.

In 2022, Dennis-Pelcher started working with Austin, Texas–based company Molecular Rebar Design (MRD) on a US Department of Energy–funded project to improve tire lifespan and energy efficiency using the firm’s dispersed carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes provide more reinforcement than conventional fillers like carbon black and silica, according to August Krupp, director of MRD’s rubber business. He says this feature will allow tire companies to use less filler material and make a more energy-efficient tire while improving structural integrity. Although MRD developed the carbon nanotube fillers, Dennis-Pelcher has published six patents proposing methods to improve the materials and incorporate them into tires. “It’s not just us innovating. He has to innovate too,” Krupp says.

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Some of Dennis-Pelcher’s innovations are already on the road. Last year, Goodyear started selling tires that contain a more sustainable carbon black made by the firm Monolith. Conventional carbon black is produced by burning petroleum or coal tar, but Monolith uses renewable electricity to pyrolyze methane into hydrogen and carbon, avoiding carbon dioxide generated by combustion.

Ned Hardman, Monolith’s vice president and R&D fellow, says Monolith’s product contains less sulfur than conventional carbon black. Sulfur is a key element used to vulcanize, or harden, rubbers, and it can significantly affect tire chemistry. Hardman credits Dennis-Pelcher with tweaking Goodyear’s manufacturing process to account for the lower sulfur content, a task that required modifying several components at the same time. “Vulcanization science is beautiful chemistry, but it’s amazingly complex,” Hardman says. “That requires incredibly deep thinking.”

The tire industry still has a long way to go to achieve its sustainability goals. Goodyear, Michelin, and other tire makers have struggled to develop an inexpensive, biobased version of isoprene, a polymer used to make synthetic rubber. And the tiny particles tires fling into the air as they wear down remain a persistent source of pollution.

Overcoming those hurdles will require a variety of new technologies, so Dennis-Pelcher is constantly hunting for ideas with a glimmer of potential. Often, peer-reviewed papers or new patents don’t lay out a complete map to industrialization, so he must fill in the gaps by combining different chemistries and technologies. “That sparks my interest,” he says.

Consumer Products

Rob Dennis-Pelcher

This materials scientist scouts out technologies to improve tire performance and sustainability

by Matt Blois
May 17, 2024 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 102, Issue 15
A portrait of Rob Dennis-Pelcher wearing a blue jacket and black glasses.

Credit: Jessica Yanesh/Goodyear Tire & Rubber/C&EN

 

Even if you develop a solution, getting it to scale . . . can be quite complicated.

Vitals

Current affiliation: Goodyear Tire & Rubber

Age: 35

PhD alma mater: University at Buffalo

Hometown: Lyndonville, New York

If I were an element, I’d be: “Carbon. It is a key component in a variety of organic compounds that make up living organisms, oils, polymers, etc. And it can take on many different amorphous and crystalline forms, such as carbon black, carbon nanotubes, graphite, graphene, diamonds, and other advanced materials that all play so many important roles in our lives today.”

My favorite TV show is:Breaking Bad. I thought Bryan Cranston and all of the actors did such a good job with the story and the characters. I also appreciated Walter White’s knowledge of chemistry and his attention to detail and quality.”

At Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s proving grounds in San Angelo, Texas, sports cars snake through cones on wet pavement, dump trucks rumble down dirt roads, and semitrailers coast down long tracks. Each year, the company puts about 20,000 tires through these tests to evaluate their traction, toughness, and fuel efficiency.

Goodyear principal scientist Rob Dennis- Pelcher’s job is to identify a mix of tire materials that optimizes all these properties while decreasing the tire’s negative effects on the environment. It’s a difficult task. A modern tire might contain 20 components, including natural and synthetic polymers to form rubber, reinforcing fillers to increase strength, and additives to improve performance. “It’s really a balance of a lot of different factors,” says Dennis-Pelcher, who specializes in reinforcing filler materials like silica and carbon black.

Right now, many tire components are derived from petroleum, but Goodyear aims to produce a tire using all biobased, recycled, or otherwise sustainable materials by 2030. Dennis-Pelcher was part of a team that last year unveiled a demonstration tire made with 90% sustainable materials. The tire included carbon black derived from soybean oil and silica made from rice husks, among other materials. But tackling the other 10% of the tire’s ingredients—and ensuring a commercial version isn’t too expensive—will require an enormous amount of creativity.

“We use so much of these materials,” Dennis-Pelcher says. “Even if you develop a solution, getting it to scale and getting it to work across the board in all the applications we need can be quite complicated.”

Dennis-Pelcher scouts out ways to achieve these sustainability goals by talking with existing suppliers, identifying new collaborators with promising technologies, and scouring peer-reviewed papers and patents. In most cases, he can’t simply drop new materials into Goodyear’s manufacturing process. So he works with outside companies to refine their technologies and ensure their products won’t interfere with other tire chemicals.

In 2022, Dennis-Pelcher started working with Austin, Texas–based company Molecular Rebar Design (MRD) on a US Department of Energy–funded project to improve tire lifespan and energy efficiency using the firm’s dispersed carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes provide more reinforcement than conventional fillers like carbon black and silica, according to August Krupp, director of MRD’s rubber business. He says this feature will allow tire companies to use less filler material and make a more energy-efficient tire while improving structural integrity. Although MRD developed the carbon nanotube fillers, Dennis-Pelcher has published six patents proposing methods to improve the materials and incorporate them into tires. “It’s not just us innovating. He has to innovate too,” Krupp says.

Some of Dennis-Pelcher’s innovations are already on the road. Last year, Goodyear started selling tires that contain a more sustainable carbon black made by the firm Monolith. Conventional carbon black is produced by burning petroleum or coal tar, but Monolith uses renewable electricity to pyrolyze methane into hydrogen and carbon, avoiding carbon dioxide generated by combustion.

Ned Hardman, Monolith’s vice president and R&D fellow, says Monolith’s product contains less sulfur than conventional carbon black. Sulfur is a key element used to vulcanize, or harden, rubbers, and it can significantly affect tire chemistry. Hardman credits Dennis-Pelcher with tweaking Goodyear’s manufacturing process to account for the lower sulfur content, a task that required modifying several components at the same time. “Vulcanization science is beautiful chemistry, but it’s amazingly complex,” Hardman says. “That requires incredibly deep thinking.”

The tire industry still has a long way to go to achieve its sustainability goals. Goodyear, Michelin, and other tire makers have struggled to develop an inexpensive, biobased version of isoprene, a polymer used to make synthetic rubber. And the tiny particles tires fling into the air as they wear down remain a persistent source of pollution.

Overcoming those hurdles will require a variety of new technologies, so Dennis-Pelcher is constantly hunting for ideas with a glimmer of potential. Often, peer-reviewed papers or new patents don’t lay out a complete map to industrialization, so he must fill in the gaps by combining different chemistries and technologies. “That sparks my interest,” he says.

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