Tensile and elastocaloric properties of natural/devulcanized waste rubber blends

The need for eco-friendly cooling materials and material recycling are two urgent challenges to address. In this paper, the role of the ground tyre rubber treatment (cryo-grinding and devulcanization) is investigated on the tensile and elastocaloric properties of Natural rubber (NR)/ ground tyre rub...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Lewandowski, A., Candau, Nicolas|||0000-0002-1559-8696, Maspoch Rulduà, M. Lluïsa|||0000-0002-4813-6412
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/423221
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/423221
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/marc.202400422
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Devulcanization
Elastocaloric rubber
Grinding
Mechanical properties
Waste rubber
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria dels materials::Materials plàstics i polímers
Descripción
Sumario:The need for eco-friendly cooling materials and material recycling are two urgent challenges to address. In this paper, the role of the ground tyre rubber treatment (cryo-grinding and devulcanization) is investigated on the tensile and elastocaloric properties of Natural rubber (NR)/ ground tyre rubber (GTR). The GTR particles that are sieved (<63µm) and devulcanized by microwave irradiation (1 min at 800Watts) exhibit a low network chain density (0.53 × 10-4 mol.cm-3) resulting from crosslinks breakage and rubber chains scission, as supported by FTIR showing a decrease of S-S, C-S, and C-C bonds. The NR/GTR blends show a high elastocaloric effect as compared to the pristine NR, which can be ascribed to the high content of carbon black in the GTR (52 wt.%) and also the high level of devulcanization of the GTR. NR/GTR blends reach a heating of +8 °C and a cooling of >-6 °C, resulting in a material's coefficient of performance COPmat = 2.8-3 compared to 2.6 for the pristine NR. The concomitant effect of cryogrinding and microwave devulcanization is proposed as a way to improve the tensile and elastocaloric properties of natural rubber/waste rubber blends for their possible integration into elastocaloric devices for heating/cooling applications.