Abstract: In rubber product formulation, the processing oils are important ingredients that eases mixing, filler dispersion, shaping and finetuning of mechanical properties. Aromatic oils are one of the widely used process aids since 1950s, but of late it has acquired legal constraints since 2010 which is based on the report by Swedish National Chemicals Inspectorate. Aromatic oils have been criticized and restricted by European countries owing to the presence of poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) beyond the permissible limits. PAHs are regarded as volatile organic compounds, persistent toxic substances, persistent organic pollutants for their negative ecological impact due to their high volatility, reactivity, teratogenicity, mutagenic and carcinogenic power. They enter into food chain through air, water, soil and organisms. Thus, as the need of the hour, present work outlays an alternate safe substance ‘liquid butadiene rubber’ (LBR) as a non-carcinogenic process aid. It is non-aromatic and can be synthesized from various sources. The LBR [1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 parts per hundred rubber (phr)] is used in the formulation and have been studied for its effect on Mooney viscosity, curing characteristics and mechanical properties. From the characterization and test data, LBR was found to be a promising substitute as it offered the results equivalent to that of the control compound containing 10phr of conventional aromatic oil. This effort could give way to shift our dependency from non-renewable crude oil to other synthetic / natural renewable sources resulting in ecological sustainability.
Keywords: Liquid butadiene rubber (LBR), safe plasticizer, carcinogenic aromatic oil, natural rubber (NR)
Copyright Form