Advantages of EPDM Rubber Products with a Third Monomer Part I Improved Peroxide Curing Efficiency in Window Gasket Applications

The recently Keltan ACE technology enables the production of EPDM polymers with up to 3 wt% VNB as a third monomer in an economically feasible manner. A series of VNB-EPDM's has been evaluated in a typical peroxide-cured, window gasket formulation and has been compared with conventional ENB-EPDM and DCPD-EPDM grades. It is shown that the peroxide curing efficiency of the VNB unsaturation is about 4 times higher than those of ENB and DCPD. Correlations between compound formulation ↔ network density ↔ vulcanizate properties have been established. For a given compound a quantitative relationship is derived, that allows the prediction of the cross-link density.