Production of High Performance Mountings by Using Rubber-Polymer Waste ()
1. Introduction
Unfortunately, many countries still do not have enough awareness to sustain their natural resources and recycling plan for waste’s technology. The negative environmental effect of this type of waste which accumulates in thousands of tons is raising the percentage of pollution [1] - [9] . Figure 1 shows the exacerbate accumulation problem toward environmental pollution. However, there are so many countries implementing high performance recycling technologies, but there is still a shortage and a demand in dealing with recycling different types of waste composite materials. Plastic waste is very harmful, especially polyethylene
Figure 1. One of the sub-rivers suffers from plastic pollution (IRAQ).
terephthalate (PET). The long degradation time and decomposition are damaging landfill. Toward the plastic burning processing which has been developed recently to turn plastic into a fuel can be implemented for a short range of plastic waste type.
Therefore, the best solution to reduce the environmental damage of this waste is recycling and converting into a raw material or useful products. Developing this field of technology will contribute toward the development of sustainable environment and increase the population’s awareness of using safe disposal methods in most of the countries [10] - [17] .
The aim of this study is to subsidize plastic industry in two main areas:
1) Environmental sustainability by reducing environmental pollutants.
2) Economically as the manufacturing products from this waste is cheap comparing to the use of original raw materials and having the same mechanical properties, better in some instances.
2. Methodology
2.1. Materials
The raw materials used in this research and the pphr contents are illustrated in Table 1 and Table 2.
2.2. Samples Preparation
The first step, the raw materials in Table 1 (except PET) processed by using a rolling Comerio Ercole Busto Avsizo roll mill machine, which contains two rolls with 150 mm diameter and 300 mm length rotating with 24 rpm speed to produced rubber sheets. The second step, using hydraulic compression machine to produce the multilayer mountings samples from rubber sheets and PET strips.
2.3. Testes and Samples Standards
a) Adhesion test: To calculate the adhesion force between rubber and PET
Compounding Ingredients | Content (pphr) |
Acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (NBR-30% AN) | 100 |
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) | 0 - 100 |
Carbon black | 0 - 40 |
Zinc oxide | 3 |
Sulfur | 1.5 |
Antioxidant (6PPD) | 1.5 |
Accelerator (TMTD) | 1.5 |
Plasticizer (DOP) | 1 |
Stearic acid | 1 |
翻译:
Table 1. Material used and their proportion.
Rubber compound recipe (pphr) | PET Hardener Percentage | PET (pphr) |
0.66 | 0 | 0 |
0.589 | 20% | 11.6 |
0.552 | 40% | 20.77 |
0.47 | 60% | 28.2 |
0.443 | 80% | 34.4 |
0.39 | 100% | 39.6 |
翻译:
Table 2. The percentage of PET hardener used in this study.
layers, the Tensometer T10 device was used for this purpose according to the ASTM D429-14 standard [18] .
b) Hardness IRHD test: this test was done according to ASTM D2240-15e1 [19] by using Wallace bead load hardness instrument.
3. Results and Discussions
Figure 2 represents the Adhesion test of NBR-PET mounting composite, we can observe from this figure that adhesion between rubber and PET layers increased with increments of PET content because the grooved edges of the PET strips layers act as high bonding points with rubber matrix. The increment in adhesion starts to decrease when the PET additives exceed 80 pphr due to the low percentage of rubber between PET strips making it easy to separate from matrix. The additives help to increase rubber hardness in general because it is a highly elastic material. The adhesion is improved by 18N up to the optimum percentage point (OPP) with an improvement rate (IR) of 22.5%.
Figure 3 represents the hardness test of SBR-PET mounting composite. Obviously, the relation is positive between the PET waste percentage and hardness, so the hardness increases with the increase of PET percentage [10] [16] . The average improvement Rate is 30%.
Figure 2. Adhesion test of NBR-PET mounting composite as a function of PET waste content.
Figure 3. Hardness test of NBR-PET mounting composite as a function of PET waste content.
4. Conclusion
After analyzing the results obtained from the tests, we found that there is an advantage for using PET waste in engineering applications, including the mountings production. The rubber hardness is improved when adding these wastes to rubber, being better bonded between the layers of PET waste and rubber. The optimum ratio of PET waste additives is 80 pphr, to achieve the best balance between hardness and adhesion.