Effect of Silicone Rubber of a Waste Composite Insulator on Cement Mortar Properties

Due to the rapid growth of the electric power system, the silicone rubber composite insulator is so widely employed around the world. However, the aging damage and decommission of it inevitably generates plenty of waste silicone rubber. It takes up large amounts of land for non-degradation, which is becoming a serious environmental issue. In this paper, the effort has been made to reuse the silicone rubber of composite insulator by peeling, breaking and adding it into the cement mortar to partly replace river sand by 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 30% in volume. Moreover, the surface modification of silicone rubber particles with H2O2 and KOH is explored to improve hydrophilicity. The mechanical strength of silicone rubber mortar and modified silicone rubber mortar are measured in detail, and the effects of particle size, content and modification of silicone rubber on the properties of mortar are investigated. This study shows that at least a 5% addition of silicone rubber can reduce the strengths, while the 15% addition is obviously favorable for increasing the toughness. Furthermore, the mortar strength gets promoted due to the surface modification. Lastly, the superior thermal insulation and noise reduction of the mortar are obtained as the addition of silicone rubber particles, and an equation between dry apparent density and thermal conductivity of mortar has been developed.