RETRACTED ARTICLE: Recycling of waste crumb rubber into a commercial materials

Abstract

Nowadays, there is an increase in heavy vehicles. These vehicles come with more wheels which has consequently increased tyre usage. Tyre rubber material is non-biodegradable. It takes more than a century to degrade. Its lifetime ensures that the tyres in heavy vehicles be changed only once in 4 or 5 years. However, it is noticed that there is an increase in scrap tyres every year. The non-degrading nature of tyre affects the environment and the whole ecosystem. Sometimes, dumping or storing of these old tyres in one place increases the breeding of mosquitos, insects, and bacteria. This causes infectious diseases in people. Wood waste in the form of powder is pressed into crumb rubber using hot pressing technology. The wood rubber composite was taken from crumb rubber and waste wood has excellent mechanical properties. After performing the tensile, tear, and thermal tests, it was found that the tensile strength of commercial material is 7.848 Mpa which is closer to virgin rubber (10 Mpa). The yield/break force was found to be > 120 N. The percentage elongation and yield elongation is found to be nearly 180% which is closer to the properties of virgin rubber. In addition to the mechanical properties, it also has a water absorption rate which is closer to 1 part in a thousand and chemical resistance rate shows very little erosion similar to virgin rubber. This makes fabricated recycled crumb rubber useful for commercial applications like flooring, sound insulation, heavy-duty performance, and vibration absorption too. In this work, crumb rubber has been selected to reduce the usage of natural raw materials.