Eco-friendly rubber compounds: Utilizing animal lard as a plasticizer oil

Abstract

Melt-mixing technique was used to compound eco-friendly plasticizer, pork fat oil (PF) and natural rubber (NR)-carbon black (CB) and studied systematically. The results obtained for the PF-compounds (PFC) were compared to petro leum oil compounds (POC) and Shea-butter oil compounds (SBC). While some properties of the PFC were similar and favored those of the POC and SBC, the PFC generally demonstrated superior physico-mechanical properties. For instance, the optimum cure time (T90) of PF5 and PF40 reduced to about 225 and 276% when compared to POC5 and POC40 and 150 and 183% relative to SBC5 and SBC40, respectively. The bound rubber content (BRC %) (filler matrix interactions) of PF5 was over 15% and 5% greater than POC5 and SBC5, respectively. Also, the PF5 outperformed POC5 by 12% in crosslinking density and by 7% in rebound resilience (%). The PF5 and PF40 further showed improvements in fatigue life cycle, exceeding POC5 and POC40 by 40% and 75%, respectively. These enhancements were attributed to the effective distri bution of CB particles facilitated by compatible PF within the NR matrix. Therefore, PF has been demonstrated to be an environmentally friendly, cost effective, and compatible plasticizer for rubber compounding compared to POC and vegetable oil, predominantly as an activator for lowering production time.