Study on Mechanical Grinding Characteristic and Mechanism of Renewable Rubber

Rubber is a kind of very important strategic natural resource. In China, the consumption growth rate of rubber in 2009 was 6.9% and the total consumption has reached to 5.88 million tons. China has become the largest rubber consumer in the last 8 consecutive years. However, the discarded rubber products also increased greatly and have reached around 7 million tons in 2009. Since main rubber consumption depends on imports, the regeneration of rubber products becomes a critical strategy to reduce rubber supply gap. In order to regenerate used rubber products, such as tires, the grinding process is the essential mechanical process to decompose of rubber and make the rubber particles suitable for regenerating. Based the analysis of the mechanical properties of rubber, a mechanical grinding pan system is designed to study the grinding mechanism of rubber. The rubber could be grinded around 0.2mm and some even reached to Nano-scale. The grinding process is optimized by studying of the rubber particle concentration, morphology features, TGA and mechanical properties of regenerated products. The study provides an effective approach to grind rubber and could save natural rubber resources as well as reducing the potential threats to the environment.