Materials from Renewable Sources for Advanced Rubber Composites

Rubbers and rubber based composites offer unique opportunities to achieve advanced performances starting from renewable sources. Natural rubber, the regular head-to-tail polymer essentially made by cis-1,4-isoprene units, is the most important rubber, with increasing worldwide consumption, that amounts at present to more than 12 million tonn/year. Increasing research efforts are spent to replace the typical oil based ingredients of rubber composites with biosourced chemicals.

This work was aimed at showing the improved performances of rubber composites that can be achieved thanks to the use of renewable sources.

Poly(1,4-cis-isoprene) samples from Hevea brasiliensis, Parthenium Argentatum, also known as Guayule and Taraxacum Kok-Saghyz, usually named as the Russian dandelion, were comparatively studied, with focus on key aspects such as strain induced crystallization¹ and sulphur based crosslinking². In particular, the effect of non rubber components is discussed.

Innovative biosourced compatibilizers³were prepared. Interaction with nanostructured and nano fillers was in particular investigated.

Innovative chemicals from renewable sources were also adopted as promoters of the vulcanization reaction.

¹ S. Musto, V. Barbera, M. Maggio, M. Mauro, G. Guerra, M. Galimberti, submitted for publication.

² Galimberti M., Musto S., Barbera V., Cipolletti V., Castellani L., Rubber Word, Nov 2014, Vol. 251 Issue 2, p. 3.

³ M. Galimberti, V. Barbera, A. Citterio, R. Sebastiano, A. Truscello, A. M. Valerio, L. Conzatti, R. Mendichi Polymer, 63, 20 April 2015, pp 62–70.