Recycling of Gamma Irradiated Inner Tubes in Butyl Based Rubber Compound

Crosslinked elastomeric materials, such as tyres are of great challenge concerning the environmental and ecological reasons. Ionizing radiation seems to offer unique opportunities to tackle the problem of recycling of polymers and rubbers on account of its ability to cause chain scission and/or cross-linking of polymeric materials. There is only limited amount of work reported on the irradiation-induced degradation of rubbers. Unlike the majority of the elastomers with high levels of unsaturation, butyl rubber exhibits significant degradation by ionizing radiation action. In this study, recycling of gamma irradiated inner tubes made of butyl rubber in butyl based rubber compounds was studied. Used inner tubes were irradiated with gamma rays in air at 100 and 120 kGy absorbed doses. The compatibility of irradiated inner tubes with virgin butyl rubber was first investigated. Gamma irradiated inner tube wastes were replaced with butyl rubber up to 15 phr in the compound recipe. Similar recipes were also prepared by using the same quantity of commercial butyl rubber crumbs devulcanized by conventional methods. The rheological and mechanical properties and carbon black dispersion degree for both types of compounds prepared by using inner tubes scraps and commercial butyl crumbs were measured and were compared to the values of virgin butyl rubber compound. It is well known that mechanical properties are deteriorated when rubber crumb is added to the virgin compound. It was observed that the decrease in the mechanical properties was much lower for the compounds prepared from the tubes irradiated at 120 kGy than irradiated at 100 kGy. The better mechanical properties were obtained for the compounds prepared by recycling of irradiated inner tubes at 120 kGy than the compounds prepared by using commercial butyl crumbs. Almost similar carbon black distributions were observed for the all compounds studied. It has been concluded that gamma irradiated inner tubes are compatible with butyl rubber and gamma irradiated used inner tubes can be recycled within butyl rubber based compounds