Effect of Bio Fillers on Mechanical Properties of Natural Rubber Latex Films

Abstract

Rubber industry is one of major raw material for many industries around the world. Therefore, supplying quality raw material is major concern among the market player. The objectives of this paper is to formulate natural rubber latex (NRL) by addition of bio fillers and to determine the impact of bio fillers (rice husk ash and tacca starch) towards the tear strength and tensile strength of the film samples. Normally, filler compounded in NRL named carbon black filler is chemical based, expensive and difficult to handle. Blending method was applied whereby named as compounding process. The vulcanized NRL was blended with the bio fillers before manual dipping process applied to obtain the film. The bio filler loaded was 10 phr and 30 phr. The optimum concentration was found to be 10 phr of tacca starch, producing tensile stress at maximum load was 18 Mpa while elongation at break was 650%. In addition, tensile stress at 300 mm elongation was 2 Mpa and tear strength is 15 N/mm.