Vulcanization history

Rubber elasticity has a long-standing history. Ancient Mesoamerican people were processing rubber by 1600 BC [1], which predated development of the vulcanization process by 3500 years. They made solid rubber balls, sofid and hollow rubber human figurines, wide rubber bands to haft stone ax heads to wooden handles, and other items. 

Despite of 150-year s history of vulcanization process, it is impossible to consider that fundamental and applied researches in direction of vulcanization systems perfection are completed. For today one of the ways of rubbers properties improvement is the synthesis and application of the new chemicals-additives, including, vulcanization active, that is connected, first of all, with reduction of global stocks of zinc ores as basic raw material for reception of traditional activator - zinc oxide. Besides, modem increase of industrial potential and the accumulation of big quantity wastes derivate the problems of ecological character, which require the emergency decision. Therefore creation of resourcesaving technologies of the new compounds reception from products of secondary raw material processing has paramount importance. 

Fig. 4. Effect of heat history on processing (scorch) safety where A shows the time after processing and storage and B shows vulcanization without...

Scorch - Premature vulcanization of a rubber compound, generally due to excessive heat history. 

Zinc oxide is a very old technological material. Already in the Bronze Age it was produced as a byproduct of copper ore smelting and used for healing of wounds. Early in history it was also used for the production of brass (Cu-Zn alloy). This was the major application of ZnO for many centuries before metallic zinc replaced the oxide [149]. With the start of the industrial age in the middle of the nineteenth century, ZnO was used in white paints (chinese white), in rubber for the activation of the vulcanization process and in porcelain enamels. In the following a number of existing and emerging electronic applications of ZnO are briefly described. 

Polymer technology is quite old compared to polymer science. For example, natural rubber was first masticated to render it suitable for dissolution or spreading on cloth in 1820. and the first patents on vulcanization appeared some twenty years later. About another one hundred years were to elapse, however, before it was generally accepted that natural rubber and other polymers are composed of giant covalently bonded molecules that differ from ordinary molecules primarily only in size. (The historical development of modern ideas of polymer constitution is traced by Flory in his classical book on polymer chemistry [ I ], while Brydson [2] reviews the history of polymer technology.) Since some of the terms we are going to review derive from technology, they are less precisely defined than those the... 

Note Guttapercha and balata have similar chemical composition (isomeric) but have very different properties and few commercial uses. Neither can be vulcanized. See latex guayule Appendix II for history of the industry. 

Special methods of incorporation processing history has an essential effect on conductivity shear imposed during mixing causes a fracture of secondary carbon aggregates increased temperature during mixing may preferentially form rubber-carbon bonds rather than the carbon-carbon bonds required for conductivity vulcanization temperature may affect recovery of broken connections between carbon-carbon bonds talc reduces melt viscosity which results in a smooth surface of extruded and calendered products as well as reduced wear of equipment ... 

Within the specific context of this chapter, renewable resources represent the obvious answer to the quest for macromolecular materials capable of replacing their fossil-based counterparts [2, 3]. This is not as original as it sounds, because, apart from the role of natural polymers throughout our history evoked above, the very first synthetic polymer commodities, developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, namely cellulose esters, vulcanized natural rubber, rosin derivatives, terpene resins , were all derived from renewable resources. What is new and particularly promising, has to do with the growing momentum that this... 

John Cremer, a fourteenth-century abbot who lived in Westminster, was reputed to have joined Raymond Lully in alchemical works in Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. Thomas Norton, author of the Ordinall of Akhimy, began writing this famous work in 1477. The reputed Basil Valentine is mentioned later in our Chemical History Tour and also by Read. Vulcan is the god of fire. Arms of Vulcan refers to fire as an instrument of chemical change. The picture depicts an immediate proximity between a chemical laboratory and a chemical library—the duality of practice and theory. Although the American Chemical Society recommends location of a university chemical research library in the chemistry laboratory building, it is unlikely that they have quite this closeness in mind. 

Manufacturers of synthetic fibers use sulfirr to cross-link the fibers together. Cross-linking makes the materials less flexible. In the same way, rubber manufacturers use sulfur to strengthen rubber. The addition of sulfur to rubber to make tires is called vulcanization. The discovery of the vulcanization process in the 1840s was a milestone in the history of invention. 

Sodium hexamethylene-l,6-bisthiosulflde dihydrate, when added to the vulcanization system, breaks down and inserts a hexamethylene-1,6-dithiyl group within a disulfide or polysulfide crosslink. This is termed a hybrid crosslink. During extended vulcanization periods or accumulated heat history due to product service, polysulfidic-hexamethylene crosslinks shorten to produce thermally stable elastic monosulfidic crosslinks. At levels up to 2.0 phr, there is little effect on compound induction or scorch times, nor on other compound mechanical properties (Rubber Chemicals, 1998). 

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