Functionalized natural rubber: rubber parts for gasohol resistance

Abstract

Nowadays, the global warming and the increasing of oil price lead to use petroleum resources carefully and reduce the use of petroleum by using other alternative energy resources. Gasohol is the one of those altermative energy which important for automobile and has a widely use in Thailand. It is a kind of the combination between gasoline and ethanol or hydrocarbon and polar solvent. The material which can resist deteriorating from gasohol is limited. NR and PHBV do not dissolve in ethanol which can be developed to be a thermoplastic vulcanizate (TPV) incorporated with PVDF, the high chemical resistant. The TPV is derived from dynamic vulcanization process which has a melt mixing of polymers and vulcanization reaction by peroxide, DBPH, is occur at the same time. The results found that the increasing amount of DBPH provides the high mechanical properties and reduce the degree of swelling in gasohol. The addition of ESO can improve the mechanical properties and the resistance to swell from gasohol with the swelling percentage lower 50 and 150 % at the temperatures of 25 and 100 °C, respectively. The morphology of TPV was also improved. The rubber phase was deformed into particles with the sized of I micron and had well dispersed in thermoplastics phase.