Powdered Corn Grain and Cornflour on Properties of Natural Rubber Latex Vulcanizates: Effect of Filler Loading

Natural rubber latex (NRL) is used as a basic raw material in manufacturing latex products for household, medical and industrial applications. This widespread use of NRL is caused by the extensive generation of solid waste material. Most of the rubber wastes are disposed of in a landfill, open burning, incineration, open dumping or recycling. As recycling of rubber is not widely practiced due to high cost and insufficient facilities, the accumulation of huge stockpiles of disposed of rubber materials has become huge social and environmental problem. Due to the environmental sustainability matters, use of bio-fillers from renewable resources to reinforce latex compounds has been addressed in this research. In this study, two series of samples were prepared using powdered corn grain and cornflour as fillers and by varying loading from 0 to 50 phr at 10 phr intervals. The effect of these fillers on the physical properties of NRL vulcanizates was investigated. The tensile property, tear strength, density, water absorption and surface morphology were studied. The results indicated that powdered corn grain filled NRL vulcanizates have good mechanical properties compared to cornflour filled vulcanizates. Powdered corn grain loading of 20 phr will be considered as the optimum filler loading to achieve required physical properties.