Michelin BioButterfly Project

MIND has been involved as a preferred supplier in an innovative European industrial demonstrator linked to bio-sourced materials and environmentally-friendly technologies for a future implementation in industrial petrochemical processes where butadiene is the main component, sourced from bioethanol.

Thanks to one of our French customers we delivered 15 vessels within a huge range of dimensions and design characteristics to the global leader of tires manufacturer, Michelin.

One of the main challenges was avoid the feared “Popcorn” effect when the internal surface finishing is not the requested, a rougher surface may cause a sudden change of the polymer from liquid condition to foam that would pack all the pipelines and vessels involved in this project.

Requirements that have been monitorized by our customer together with the final client have been not only the surface finish values but also strength calculations, correct bolting tightening values, chemical composition of materials involved by PMI checking without leaving the composition of the water to be used for the pressure testing of each vessel.

This inaguration in 2024 of this project in Bassens (France) has been a major step forward in the development of bio-based butadiene worldwide sector.