RHEOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR ASSESSMENT OF CONVENTIONAL MIXTURES BETWEEN NATURAL RUBBER AND LEATHER WASTES

Abstract

The mixtures of natural rubber with post-industrial leather waste have a high potential given their technical characteristics, as evidenced in works developed by different authors; however, there is no information on the processes of transformation on an industrial scale. The rheology studies about rubber mixtures allow to define the best method for its processing, to validate the above experimental tests are required in molds that allow to determine the fluidity of various mixtures. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the research on the formulation of rubber-leather blends, their treatment, design and transformation to obtain products applicable on an industrial scale, as an alternative solution to the environmental problems generated by leather waste. The present work allows to know experimentally the fluidity of 3 elastomeric mixtures (injection, extrusion and compression grade) in a mold designed for this purpose, its validation allows to determine the processing behaviour of these materials, after this relate this behaviour with the fluidity of leather rubber mixtures and the correlation with their rheological behaviour. The parameters obtained by vulcanization reometries have a direct relationship with the mixtures behaviour in the "X" type flow mold. Key Words: Elastomers, natural rubber, leather waste, elastomer rheology, flow molds.