Effect of Epoxidized Palm Oil (EPO) on Tensile Properties and Density of Rubber Compounding

Abstract

Epoxidized palm oil (EPO) can act as processing oil has the potential of non toxic, degradable, renewable resource and as the alternative safe process oils in rubber compounding. Epoxidized palm oil is used as some of additives in rubber compounding to provide function of softener or stabiliser thus, improve properties of rubber compounding performance. Rubber that is used in this study is styrene butadiene rubber (SBR); a synthetic rubber copolymer consisting of styrene and butadiene. SBR also has good abrasion resistance and good aging stability when protected by additives. Compared to natural rubber, SBR has better processability, heat aging and abrasion resistance but inferior elongation, hot tear strength, hysteresis, resilience and tensile strength. This study is focusing on the effect of EPO without the addition of carbon black into the compound via tensile and density test. This is very important as to study the physical and mechanical interaction between SBR and EPO without the influence of other fillers. Different loading of oil were used at 25 pphr, 30 pphr. 35 pphr, 40 pphr and 45 pphr in the compounding process as processing aid. EPO35 which contain 35 pphr of EPO shows the highest value of tensile strength which is 2.2 MPa. The vulcanizate that contain 30 pphr of EPO shows the highest value for Youngs modulus which is 0.22 MPa while the elongation at break increased as the oil loading increased. The highest value for density is 0.979 g/cm3for the vulcanizate contain 25 pphr of EPO. The results indicates that EPO is potential to replace other processing oils as renewable resource and safe to human.