Devulcanization and Characterization of Ground Tire Rubber with Microwave Method

The increase in transportation vehicles worldwide has also led to an increase in the production of tires, which are an important part of the vehicle and are used in these vehicles. Industrially, vehicle tires are produced through a process called vulcanization and acquire their high elasticity in this way. However, the sulfur crosslinks formed by the vulcanization process make it very difficult to recycle tire rubber. In the evaluation of vehicle tires that become waste after their service life is completed, direct evaluation, use as an energy source and pyrolysis are used in recycling methods. However, none of these methods aim to recycle tire rubber as a material, that is, to turn it into a re-moldable rubber. In recent years, studies have stated that devulcanization, that is, the breaking of crosslinks, is possible with thermal, mechanical and chemical effects. In this study, ground tire rubber was devulcanized by the microwave method. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the process by characterizing the ground tire rubber exposed to different microwave durations. For this purpose, the characterization of devulcanized rubber was carried out by soluble fractions, crosslink densities, FTIR analyses and SEM imaging.