A few tiny test fields and raised beds in Abbotsford are covered with weeds. In fact, the planter cells in the nearby greenhouse are purposely seeded with weeds, too — but not just any weeds. The farmer, in this case, is growing Russian dandelion.
Anvar Buranov — a scientist by trade — is pulling less desirable weeds and talking about B.C.’s future as a producer of environmentally friendly rubber, a future built on the stringy sap of the dandelion. Buranov’s firm, NovaBioRubber Green Technologies, is in a global race with groups in Ontario, Ohio and Germany to come up with a high-yielding dandelion and an extraction process that can compete with conventional rubber.
Nearly all of the world’s rubber is produced in Asia from rubber trees, which are slow-growing and suffering from declining production possibly due to climate change. The world’s appetite for natural rubber is growing, especially for tires and medical equipment. Dandelion rubber is non-allergenic, which is particularly important to the medical industry.
Nova-BioRubber recently received a $125,000 federal/provincial Growing Forward 2 grant for agricultural innovation to prove his crop and his technology; he also has received support for his work from multinational tire companies and the federal Industrial Research Assistance Program of the National Research Council.
Scientists puzzling over methods for extracting rubber from a Kazakhstani weed won’t exactly have to reinvent the wheel.
Soviet-era scientists recognized the potential of the Russian dandelion as a source of rubber in the 1930s. During the Second World War, Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia put a stranglehold on the world’s main rubber-producing regions, forcing the Soviet Union and the United States into a crash program of dandelion-rubber extraction.
The plant was cultivated in Canada and the United States between 1941 and 1943, without spreading into the natural environment, according to a report by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
However, the extraction technology they came up with was so horrifically expensive — about $200 per kilogram of rubber in today’s dollars — that it was shelved and forgotten as soon as cheaper rubber became available again at the end of the war, according to Buranov.
Tire giant Bridgestone is attempting to patent a solvent-based extraction process pioneered during the war, while Nova-BioRubber is committed to solvent-free extraction. Buranov’s process — patented in the U.S. — involves grinding dried dandelion roots and separating the rubber from plant fibre mechanically.
“We have come up with a new, clean technology with a production cost of $1 per kilogram and it is hypoallergenic, so it will be very useful for medical devices,” said Buranov. The commodity price of natural rubber is about $2-$2.38 per kilogram.
The company started planting test plots after the CFIA decided the commercial potential of the crop outweighed any need to regulate it as a potential pest.
Buranov is convinced that Russian dandelion can be made to thrive on non-prime farmland in northern B.C., without displacing food crops.
“B.C. has an ideal climate for this plant,” he said.