Towards Next-Generation Sustainable Composites Made of Recycled Rubber, Cenospheres, and Biobinder
Polymers 2021
Kristīne Irtiševa, Vjačeslavs Lapkovskis, Viktors Mironovs, Jurijs Ozoliņš, Vijay Kumar Thakur, Gaurav Goel, Jānis Baroniņš, Andrejs Šiškins

The utilisation of industrial residual products to develop new value-added materials and reduce their environmental footprint is one of the critical challenges of science and industry. Devel- opment of new multifunctional and bio-based composite materials is an excellent opportunity for the effective utilisation of residual industrial products and a right step in the Green Deal's direction as approved by the European Commission. Keeping the various issues in mind, we describe the manufacturing and characterisation of the three-component bio-based composites in this work. The key components are a bio-based binder made of peat, devulcanised crumb rubber (DCR) from used tyres, and part of the fly ash, i.e., the cenosphere (CS). The three-phase composites were prepared in the form of a block to investigate their mechanical properties and density, and in the form of granules for the determination of the sorption of water and oil products. We also investigated the properties’ dependence on the DCR and CS fraction. It was found that the maximum compression strength (in block form) observed for the composition without CS and DCR addition was 79.3 MPa, while the second-highest value of compression strength was 11.2 MPa for the composition with 27.3 wt.% of CS. For compositions with a bio-binder content from 17.4 to 55.8 wt.%, and with DCR con- tents ranging from 11.0 to 62.0 wt.%, the compressive strength was in the range from 1.1 to 2.0 MPa. Liquid-sorption analysis (water and diesel) showed that the maximum saturation of liquids, in both cases, was set after 35 min and ranged from 1.05 to 1.4 g·g -1 for water, and 0.77 to 1.25 g·g-1 for diesel. It was observed that 90% of the maximum saturation with diesel fuel came after 10 min and for water after 35 min.


Keywords
sustainable composites; crumb rubber; devulcanised crumb rubber; cenosphere; peat; biocomposite; hybrid material; bio-binder; oil absorption
DOI
10.3390/polym13040574
Hyperlink
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/4/574

Irtiševa, K., Lapkovskis, V., Mironovs, V., Ozoliņš, J., Thakur, V., Goel, G., Baroniņš, J., Šiškins, A. Towards Next-Generation Sustainable Composites Made of Recycled Rubber, Cenospheres, and Biobinder. Polymers, 2021, Vol. 13, No. 4, Article number 574. ISSN 2073-4360. Available from: doi:10.3390/polym13040574

Publication language
English (en)
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