Utilização do processo físico de microondas para recuperação de borracha bromo butílica

Abstract

In the last years, the research on material recycling has being steadly growing in the entire world. In Brazil, this kind of research is growing gradually, however recycling is still not part of Brazilian´s society, as generally occurs in developed countries. The physical process of recovering of several types of polymers such as rubber, with high energy (electromagnetic waves - microwaves) is the subject of researches at the CQMA/IPEN and Poli/USP. The object of this present work was to evaluate the efficiency of this method in order to recover butyl bromine rubber used in pharmaceutical products, aiming to return it as an active load instead of inert load. This process of devulcanization involves exposing rubber materials to microwave energy under controlled conditions: frequency - 2450MHz, variable power output - 1.0kW to 3.0kW, temperature of the samples and irradiation time. These conditions theoretically break sulphur bonds and produce a rubber material that can be used in raw rubber compounds. The samples were analyzed by several characterization techniques.