Smithers Rapra consortium promotes devulcanisation

A Smithers Rapra led consortium is exploring routes for the utilisation of a novel rubber devulcanisation technology, developed as a result of a recent project called DevulCO2.

DevulCO2 was funded by the UK's Technology Strategy Board (TSB).

This technology enables manufacturers to re-use the large quantity of waste rubber which is available due to environmental legislation and the on-going need for the rubber industry to recycle and improve its cost effectiveness.

This new devulcanisation process is novel, effective and commercially competitive, and enables waste rubber to be easily processed and re-vulcanised into a range of high quality rubber products.

Mike Day, managing director, Smithers Rapra, said: "As a result of the successful project Smithers Rapra has recently invested in new processing equipment to enable higher quantities of the devulcanised rubber to be supplied in response to increasing demand".

The process has been shown to be capable of recovering up to 80 per cent of the physical properties of the original virgin rubber compounds.

This has enabled the devulcanised rubber to be used successfully for the manufacture of a range of final products such as mounts, fenders, and seals, using standard techniques such as compression moulding and injection moulding.

In addition to being available in this ready to process form, the devulcanised rubber can also be provided in a masterbatch form for blending with other rubber compounds.

Further development work will be undertaken during the course of a second two year TSB project entitled Remould, which started in the Autumn of 2009.

This will involve transferring the technology to other rubbers, such as nitrile rubber and EPDM, and assessing the performance of the devulcanised rubber in the re-treading of passenger tyres and truck tyres.

The consortium members are: Smithers Rapra, PJH Partnership, Martins Rubber Company, BD Technical Polymer, J Allcock and Sons, Charles Lawrence International, London Metropolitan University and Kingpin.

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