Rubber Lining Technology

Since the advent of the first rubber lining, research and development work continued and today s rubber technology took a different shape from eraser-to-tyre technology to a more sophisticated high technology discipline known as anticorrosive rubber or... 

Rubber lining is one of the best known and proven methods employed to protect chemical process equipment against the corrosive and abrasive attacks of the fluids. One of the most important characteristics of both natural rubber and synthetic rubber is the remarkable resistance to corrosive chemicals, fumes, acids, alkalies and other salt solutions. Without protection, corrosion would be so extensive that most products of modern technology could not exist. The variations and large percentages of corrosive impurities have little influence on the rubber lining up to temperatures as high as 100 °C to 120 °C. 

This book does not deal with the fundamental chemistry of rubber and its reaction mechanisms with acids, alkalies, fumes and gases prevalent in, and handled in, process industries. Such a treatise can undoubtedly be found in research work, papers and books published, which are rich resources enabling corrosion engineers to correlate science with facts and to act accordingly to solve problems of corrosion. Instead, this book deals with the specialty subject of protective rubber lining and its applications in various industries, highlighting technological aspects of manufacture and application. 

This book is considered to be a unique addition to the world of technical literature, due to its thorough exposition of case histories and industrial practice. It is the product of a very long process to present an informative book on this subject in a concise form which should be useful to user industries and practising engineers in their respective industrial environments. This work is the author s sincere and humble wish to draw the attention of the concerned, serious, worried and interested readers and students to the technological aspects of protective rubber lining and its vast potential as a technically viable, and commercially important, material of construction for the process industries to combat corrosion. 

It is of interest to examine the development of the analytical toolbox for rubber deformulation over the last two decades and the role of emerging technologies (Table 2.9). Bayer technology (1981) for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of rubbers and elastomers consisted of a multitechnique approach comprising extraction (Soxhlet, DIN 53 553), wet chemistry (colour reactions, photometry), electrochemistry (polarography, conductometry), various forms of chromatography (PC, GC, off-line PyGC, TLC), spectroscopy (UV, IR, off-line PylR), and microscopy (OM, SEM, TEM, fluorescence) [10]. Reported applications concerned the identification of plasticisers, fatty acids, stabilisers, antioxidants, vulcanisation accelerators, free/total/bound sulfur, minerals and CB. Monsanto (1983) used direct-probe MS for in situ quantitative analysis of additives and rubber and made use of 31P NMR [69]. 

LC-MS is now a nature technology and operation of an LC-MS system is no longer the realm of an MS specialist. The proper choice of the LC-MS mode to be used in a specific situation depends on analyte class, sample type and problem (detection, confirmation, identification). On-line LC-MS is used more for specialised applications than for general polymer or rubber compound analysis. This derives from the fact that LC-MS method development (column, solvent system, solvent programme, ionisation mode) is rather time consuming. LC-MS (in particular with API interface) enables analysis of a wide range of polar and nonvolatile compounds which cannot be analysed by GC (icf. Scheme 7.7). 

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