Using a sulfur-bearing silane to improve rubber formulations for potential use in industrial rubber articles

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology on 13/08/2012, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01694243.The availability of the coupling agent bis (3-triethoxysilylpropyl)-tetrasulfide (TESPT) has provided an opportunity for enhancing the reinforcing capabilities of precipitated amorphous white silica in rubber. Styrene-butadiene rubber, synthetic polyisoprene rubber (IR), acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber, and natural rubber (NR) containing the same loading of a precipitated silica filler were prepared. The silica surface was pretreated with TESPT, which is a sulfur-bearing bifunctional organosilane to chemically bond silica to the rubber. The rubber compounds were subsequently cured by reacting the tetrasulfane groups of TESPT with double bonds in the rubber chains and the cure was optimized by adding sulfenamide accelerator and zinc oxide. The IR and NR needed more accelerators for curing. Surprisingly, there was no obvious correlation between the internal double bond content and the accelerator requirement for the optimum cure of the rubbers. Using the TESPT pretreated silanized silica was a very efficient method for cross-linking and reinforcing the rubbers. It reduced the use of the chemical curatives significantly while maintaining excellent mechanical properties of the cured rubbers. Moreover, it improved health and safety at work-place, reduced cost, and minimized damage to the environment because less chemical curatives were used. Therefore, TESPT was classified as "green silane" for use in rubber formulations

Effects of recycled PVC content and processing temperature on the properties of PVC foam products

This work used different types of recycled PVC products including PVC pipes and bottles, as rigid recyclates, and PVC plastic coverings, as soft recyclate. The PVC recyclates were added into virgin PVC foam, ranging from 0-100wt%. The PVC blends were then moulded with different processing temperatures, and their properties were monitored. It was found that the concentration of the pipe recyclates up to 60 wt% could be used to add into the PVC virgin for production of rigid PVC foam products. The higher the recyclate content led to the higher the blend density and the mechanical properties (flexural and impact strength, and hardness). For bottle recyclates, up to 60 wt% of bottle recyclates could be used for rigid PVC foam production, but the overall properties, except for the impact strength, of the PVC foam did not improve withincreasing the recycled bottles. For recycled coverings, increasing plastic coverings led to an increase in average cell size, but resulted in decreases of impact and hardness resistances. The flexible or soft PVC foam products could be manufactured with use of 0-100wt% recycled coverings. In summary, it could be concludedthat recyclates of pipes, bottles and plastic coverings can be mixed with virgin PVC foam for making foam products