Arduro Sustainable Rubber Inc. is a clean technology advanced manufacturing company that converts waste tire back into their primary components (rubber, carbon black or “CB” and steel). The company has developed a patented process that provides high quality raw materials (rubber and carbon black) at competitive prices to go back into Original Equipment Manufacturing products, while providing an environmentally sustainable disposal method of ELTs.

Eight years in the making

The initial research for the project goes back eight years when Dr. Gerold Willing, professor and chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at Speed School, was working with Civil Engineering professor Thomas Rockaway and the Center for Infrastructure Research as well as the Rapid Prototyping Center. With an American Water Works Association grant, they were studying the aging of elastomeric materials and the water utility industry.

Due to new EPA rules, utilities had begun switching from using chlorine to clean water to using chloramines. But with the introduction of the new chemicals, they began to notice rubber components were degrading much faster than they should be.

“They were supposed to be lasting 20 years, but were only lasting two years,” said Willing.

The rapid degradation mechanisms inspired Willing to wonder if there was any way to purposefully use this to degrade rubber, and the idea for the research germinated in 2012. That term, graduate student Patrick Kroeger wrote his Master’s thesis on the project. “Could this be a feasible method of recycling tires? and the answer was yes,” said Kroeger, who decided to continue to pursue this project through his PhD at Speed School.

“We replicated our results from my original Master’s thesis and we filed for our provisional patent in fall of 2014, and then filed for the full patent and received it in 2016,” he said.

The sometimes difficult next step in taking the research to commercialization was finding funding. “At that point, we managed to cobble together some funding with a little bit from the state and a little bit from the university to continue developing it,” said Willing.

Patented new technology attracts investor

Willing explained that when you’re seeking funding, it comes to develop a proof of concept and to prepare for commercialization.

“But there is a space between where it’s a funding gap,” he said. As luck would have it, UofL’s technology transfer office put the project work on the website and immediately attracted the attention of business executive and investor Ian Lowe, who is now the CEO of Arduro.

“With his connections and influence, he took us the next step to the commercialization route,” said Willing.

Kroeger designed the system and after two years at the company, is currently the vice president of Technology for Arduro. “There was no technology that was really effective at creating a vulcanized rubber product where you can basically take the tire from a rigid, non-malleable state and chemically modify it so that it can go back and be remolded and then re-vulcanized and put back into, for example, another tire,” said Kroeger. “There’s no other technology out there that does that right now, so Ian Lowe and I began discussing my background, and he needed someone to lead the technical side of it.”

From the lab to the workplace

Kroeger was not the only chemical engineering major from Speed School to find the idea of building something from the ground up appealing. Cora Grief, Heather Evans and Michael LaRoche, among others, worked as co-ops and undergraduate assistants.

“They’ve been a critical part of the development as we progressed through ideas and concepts and manufacturing techniques that didn’t work, and then eventually adjusted those into actually working,” said Kroeger. “They’ve been there every step of the way.”

Grief was the first co-op at Arduro. “When I entered the chemical engineering major, I became really interested in more green-type of endeavors, helping to fix some of the damage we have done to harm the Earth,” said Grief. “When I saw Arduro, it’s a very hands-on workspace. You can just try things out, and your ideas can be implemented really quickly,” she said.

Kroeger said Evans began as an intern and while she finished classes at Speed, in between she was working to bring the pilot plant up and operating, building the beginning of the infrastructure that would turn into what it is today.

“I was attracted to the sustainability aspect of Arduro,” said Evans. “A lot of companies in the chemical industry really just aren’t doing the best thing for the environment. I really liked the environment of the start-up. We’re all here because we have the motivation and ambition to do something meaningful.”

LaRoche completed all three co-op rotations at Arduro, and upon graduation in Spring 2022, will be working for the company as well.

“Freshmen year, not too long after I started working at Arduro, I just kind of immediately fell in love with the pilot plant setting,” said LaRoche. “I felt like my ideas were respected, and I feel like I learned a lot of information very quickly about chemical engineering in general, and the transition from a lab state to an actual plan.”

Two graduates tapped to lead development in Canada

The success of Arduro as a company over the last two years has led to the company expanding its footprint into Canada. “roeger said Grief and Evans were hired with the primary goal and focus on the development of the Nova Scotia plan.����

The two engineers are excited for the challenge.

“We’re still in the very early stages,” said Evans. “We are looking at different sites for where the plant is going to go up, figuring out what contractors we need to get those sites ready. The scope of the project is how do we take what we’ve done that’s out here in the pilot plan and scale that up and put that in Canada?”

The project is a two-phased approach, with a tire shredding plant built before the reaction system. Kroeger expects the plant to produce around 2.5 tons of rubber and 1.5 tons of carbon black every day. The Nova Scotia plant is expected to be operational by mid-2023.

Willing said the environmental impact is huge. “When people talk about a fundamental shift in how we do things, this is that shift,” he said. “Up until this point, there’s been no way to close that rubber loop effectively, and you end up either burning it or it goes in a landfill. But now that’s not the end of the road.”

“It will begin to address at a massive environmental problem,” added Kroeger. “A lot of people are excited about the fact that we can reuse material. We’ve talked to some pretty big tire companies and rubber manufacturers, and they want to be part of the solution.”

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The master’s student was outside in the summer heat, filling 500-gallon tanks with potable reclaimed water at the Metropolitan Sewer District’s Floyds Fork Water Quality Treatment Center. The four tanks were heading to four Louisville craft breweries, where the water would be used in some new brews as part of a pilot project.

Shipman, 22, knew better than just about anyone that it was ready to drink. So on that hot July day, he took a couple of gulps.

“And I’m still standing here,” he laughed.

Shipman is one of 20 University of Louisville Speed School students who had a part in the water pilot project, which has been named Next Round Brewing (motto: “Good as New, Great for Brew”). He is using the project for his master’s thesis.

Next Round is a joint effort among UofL, MSD, Louisville Water Co., the breweries, the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment Association, the Kentucky-Tennessee section of American Water Works Association and Isopure Corp., the world’s leading manufacturer of FDA-registered equipment for dialysis water treatment, which built the purifier. The goal was to find a way to turn something no one would consider drinking into something everyone would want to drink.

Milad Ebrahimi, a Speed School doctoral graduate who works as an MSD regulatory compliance analyst, had the idea about a year ago. He proposed a capstone project for seniors in the chemical engineering department: What are the best ways to remove enough contaminants from treated wastewater to make it drinkable?��

Five teams of four students each took on different challenges for the small-scale wastewater treatment system, including experimenting with chemicals and filters, adding copper ions and water softeners and zapping the water with UV light. Ebrahimi and his team took the best ideas from each student group and incorporated it into Next Round’s water purification system.��

“They all did a great job,” he said.

The team tested the water, tweaked the system, then tested it again, then tweaked it again. This happened over and over and over and over until, by July, lab tests showed the water met the standards for drinking water. It’s the first time this has been successfully done in Kentucky and Tennessee, Ebrahimi said.

“This process is not fast,” Shipman said. “But quality and safety is not to be rushed.”

An informational video about Next Round emphasizes that the amount of water on Earth is finite, and parts of the world are already struggling with the demand for clean drinking water.��

“Inspiring and promoting dialogue about diversifying our nation’s water portfolio is an important part of a national water strategy,” Ebrahimi wrote in an article describing the project.��

The four breweries — Gordon Biersch, Holsopple Brewing, Akasha Brewing and Apocalypse Brew — will serve their beer Aug. 18 at Louisville’s Waterfront Park during the celebration of water event sponsored by the Water Professionals Conference.��

“The source isn’t really quite as important as what comes out,” said Nick Landers of Gordon Biersch.��

Read about the breweries in this WFPL .��

Check out more about this project here:

Vulcanization makes the rubber more durable, but also makes it difficult to break down for recycling. Today, a lot of used rubber is burned for fuel, chopped up or left in landfills.��

The UofL technology, invented by Dr. Gerold Willing and Patrick Kroeger, a UofL PhD student and now senior process engineer at Arduro, uses creative chemistry to sustainably reclaim the rubber used in tires and other rubber-based products, like garden hoses, plastics and shoe soles.

“With this technology, we can take the rubber, break it down, and recycle it into new rubber,” said Willing, a UofL associate professor and associate chair of chemical engineering.

Willing worked with the UofL , under the Office of Research and Innovation, to protect the technology’s intellectual property and find a commercial partner.��

That partner is Arduro CEO Ian C. Lowe, who liked the sustainable approach to addressing waste tire and rubber. The U.S. burned some 1.7 million tons of waste tires in 2017, according to . Burning that rubber .��

Lowe wants to shift more of that to recycling, “which we were previously unable to do,” he said. “There’s a great opportunity to reduce our CO2 footprint and produce high quality recycled product to go back into everyday products.”

Lowe licensed the UofL technology after just two months of collaborative discussion and negotiation with the Commercialization EPI-Center, working with commercialization manager, Kayla Meisner. Lowe said he now hopes to work with UofL to develop further applications for the technology, and has opened an R&D and manufacturing facility in Louisville.��

Lowe said Arduro has aggressive plans for expansion, and is developing a new rubber recycling facility capable of processing 20 tons of rubber per day. He said the new facility is scheduled to begin construction in 2020.

“When you look at places best suited to advance this technology and have the ‘know-how’ and capacity to do so, the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville and Louisville area are unique,” he said. “Not every school and region can do that. This one can.”

Willing has been working on this technology since the mid 2000s. He said working in lock-step with the Commercialization EPI-Center helped drive the technology’s development, and gave him insight on potential applications, customers and market size.��

“By fostering the development and commercialization of technologies like this one, we can create strong partnerships that connect researchers, technology and industry,” said Dr. Allen Morris, EPI-Center’s executive director. “We’re looking forward to working with Dr. Willing and Arduro to get this technology to market.”��

Wilson (96GS, 97GS) is the Michter’s master of maturation, a relatively newer title for anyone — woman or man — in the Kentucky bourbon distilling industry. Wil­son works hand-in-hand with the distillery’s master distiller to ensure the aging process of the barrels is doing its part to end up with the exact bourbon they have in mind.

Marianne Barnes also graduated from UofL with a chemical engineering degree. She expected to find work in biofuels, but instead is helping bring an abandoned Kentucky distillery back to life.

Barnes (12S) became the first woman since Prohibition to be named master distiller in Kentucky when she joined Castle & Key in 2015.��Her job is to come up with the products that will revive a long-abandoned spirits company and distillery in Frankfort that is being meticulously restored.

Joyce Nethery used her chemical engineering training to work in indus­trial distilling, teach high school and become chief financial officer of a dairy farm. But when she combined her education with her passion for heirloom vegetables, she put a new Kentucky artisan distillery on the map.

Nethery (85S, 87GS) is the master distiller and co-owner of Jeptha Creed Distillery in Shelbyville. Jeptha Creed sold out of its first tiny batch of bourbon and makes flavored moonshine and vodkas. Next year, another bourbon will be ready. The Nethery family uses an heirloom corn called “Bloody Butcher” that they grow themselves on their farm.

Katherine O’Nan will graduate in May with her degree in chemical engineering. She interned at Michter’s under Wilson and Heilmann. Thanks to her��Brown Fellowship, she also had an opportunity to travel to Scotland, then to Canada, to see how they made their whiskeys. Following in the footsteps of Wilson, Barnes and Nethery, she is poised for a promising career in an industry that 40 years ago wasn’t on the radar for female graduates of UofL’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering.

Read��, the full story of a quartet of Speed School women who are the engineers behind Kentucky’s best bourbons in the Winter/Spring 2018 edition of UofL Magazine.��The full issue is available��.