Vegetable oil extended emulsion styrene butadiene rubbers for passenger car radial tire tread application

Abstract

Currently emulsion polymerized Styrene Butadiene Rubber (E-SBR) is extended with various petroleum based mineral oils like Distillate Aromatic Extract (DAE), Treated Distillate Aromatic Extract (TDAE), Residual Aromatic Extract (RAE) and Naphthenic oils. It is obvious that introduction of vegetable oil should result in almost zero Polycyclic Aromatic Content (PCA) content and therefore, are environmentally friendly, renewable, and sustainable. In the present work, vegetable oil extended Styrene Butadiene Rubber (OE-SBR) were characterized for chemical properties and found that all the properties were meeting the specification requirements of mineral oils extended grades. These rubbers were also evaluated in standard Passenger Car Radial (PCR) tire tread compound recipe for various processing, different vulcanizate and other performance properties. The developed grades with vegetable oils required less mixing energy (around 10% for master batch and 15% for final batch) and shown better flow behavior (around 15% power law index and 20% activation energy reduction), better carbon dispersion (around 20%), high reinforcement index (around 15%), better rubber-filler interaction parameter (around 20%), better abrasion resistance (around 20%) and lower tanδ value @60°C (around 15%) as compared to TDAE oil extended SBR based compound. This may help to improve life of a PCR tire and reduction in fuel consumption of the vehicle.