research and development (scrap tire to elastomer)
Increasing consumption of polymeric materials in the world, despite having various benefits, has brought with it many environmental problems. After being discarded, polymeric materials remain in nature for many years to decompose. For this reason, many efforts are being made in the world to make biodegradable polymers and develop related technologies. But now a lot of polymeric materials are discarded every year, part of which is recycled and returned to the consumption cycle, another part remains in nature and in addition to causing environmental problems leads to loss of capital. Therefore, with the beginning of the production of polymeric materials, there have always been many efforts to find ways to recycle them and develop these technologies. Recycling plastic materials (because they are thermoplastic) is a much simpler process than rubber materials. Tires are non-melting due to their thermal hardness and their recycling process is difficult.
There are problems in recycling all kinds of waste and wastes of thermoset materials. Since these materials have a network structure, they do not have the ability to be melted and reprocessed. Hard heat wastes include unsaturated polyesters, polyurethanes, natural and synthetic rubbers, and epoxies, of which baked rubbers are the most abundant.
There are three ways to reuse rubber waste:
- Powdering rubber waste and using it in items such as asphalt, rubber products and thermoplastics.
- Pyrolysis of rubber waste and use of pyrolysis products.
- de vulcanization of rubber wastes and their use in rubber products or thermoplastic elastomers.
