I’ll start this article with the disclosure that i own shares in Amerityre (AMTY) the company i feature in this article.  This company was suggested to me as a longshot, green investment by a friend out west who is into trading stocks (i’m into investing for a period of a year or two).

So, Amerityre manufacturers foam polyurathene tires, the sort that might be found on electric mobility devices and powered wheelchairs.  They make solid tires used in agriculture, they make “tire fill” to go into solid and “run flat” tires.  Most recently they’ve been working on pneumatic (air filled) tires to replace the traditional rubber tires used on cars and trucks.  So, why is this company suddenly on my Solar/Green blog?  Because this company fights global warming.

 Let’s start with the product that is still under development, the automotive, pneumatic tires.  The first test indicate that the Polyurathene tires were getting less traction than rubber tires, but also had a lower rolling resistance than rubber, enough to increase gas mileage by 5 to 10%.  So, if you just look at the final product, a tire on a car, this new concept can help reduce the use of gasoline and it’s CO2 output and is a greener product than rubber.  Yet the greatest value of the product is gained, not when it’s mounted a car, but during manufacturing.  To vulcanize rubber and create tires, you must use heat and pressure on the rubber to harden it.  In contrast the heat and pressure, which is a huge cost in terms of energy and CO2 is absent from the Amerityre process.

A second product, being shipped today, is a tire fill.  That is a material used to fill rubber tires that are used for construction or “run flat” and have a rubber outside and some solid form of fill. The “Amerifill” is a lightweight alternative to traditional fill, once again, helping remove weight from vehicles helping save fuel in the shipping and use of these tires.

 Is this a great investment? Will be soon driving on Polyurathene tires? I don’t really know, but it shows another business that is going to make money in the green revolution by causing the evolution of tires into to a product with a lower carbon and energy footprint.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Conservation, Global Warming, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.