Evaluation of EPDM scrap/ natural fiber vulcanization by solvent swelling analysis

In the rubber industry there is an opportunity to reuse unvulcanized rubber scrap generated during the formulation process, as well as to find alternatives for its use. For this reason, in this work the characterization of EPDM/natural fiber scrap with different proportions is studied through rheological and swelling studies according to the Flory Rehner Equation. The solvents used were distilled water, cyclohexane and toluene at different exposure times. The results found allow us to conclude that the fiber content in EPDM rubber does not affect the scorch time, the maximum vulcanization time. In the case of swelling analysis, the observed changes had a maximum increase of approximately 3% when the fiber content in the composite material increased when they were exposed to water and toluene, this was attributed to the characteristics of the EPDM studied in this work.