Turkish university builds brake pad from nutshell

A group of Turkish academicians from Kocaeli University have developed a new project to build brake pads from nutshells that is expected to reduce production costs by 20 percent.

Associate Professor Hasan Öktem, chair of the three-member team, said they have produced asbestos-free brake pads for passenger vehicles by using a powder extracted from nutshells.

Öktem said the project to produce “Brake pads from nutshells” came from another idea, to produce composite materials by using natural resources in Turkey.

“Then we found that nutshell would be the best material for brake pad and started research on it,” he added.

Öktem said that a total of 20 different kind of powders were used in the brake pad.

“Our aim was to bring friction to the optimum level,” he continued.

He said that they produced the nutshell brake pad as an alternative to petcoke.

Öktem said the main goal of the project to decrease the use of imported powder to the lowest level and increase the use of domestic powder in the production of brake pads.