Waste printer ink as modifier for natural rubber/carbon black composites: No haste, use waste

Abstract

From a sustainability perspective, achieving a greener future with a minimal carbon footprint requires maximizing waste materials' reuse. Typically, processing, price, properties, and performance are the four pillars of satisfying customer demands. Armed with this vision, the present work seeks to utilize waste printer ink (WPI) as a source of carbon in combination with low- and high-surface carbon black (LCB and HCB, respectively) additives to enhance the properties and performance of natural rubber (NR). Using WPI-modified CB together with NR underlines the importance of this work from a sustainability angle. By altering the type and amount of CB and WPI content, a broad properties window was unraveled, such that a very high elongation at break of ∼970% and elasticity of 53% were achieved under optimized conditions and formulation, when compared with 385% and 27.5% values of the reference blank NR sample, respectively. Thermal stability was also changed quite broadly, depending on the formulation. The analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) revealed that propanol and its derivatives were the most abundant volatiles detected, accounting for more than 85% of the total emission. Analyzing environmental contamination and properties investigations opened avenues to propose practical ideas and strategies in order to standardize the usage of WPI and CB additives in NR compounding.