Effects of Treated Wood Flour on Physico-Mechanical Properties of Filled Natural Rubber

Abstract

Wood flour was crushed in to particle size and given two surface treatments each with alkali and 3-chloro-2 hydroxylpropyltrimethylammoniumchloride. The raw, alkali-treated and bonding agent treated fibers were used as natural rubber composites. The samples were used to produce fiber-reinforced natural rubber composite at varying filler loadings. Properties such as tensile strength, hardness and impact resistance of the composites were investigated. The tensile strength of the composites varied such that both the alkali-treated and cationized fillers recorded higher values than the untreated fillers. The impact strength and hardness properties were also found to be better in the modified than the untreated ones. This work has shown some general improvements arising from causticization and cationization of cellulosic filler as reinforcing material for natural rubber.

Keywords: Cationization, Causticization, Mechanical properties, Natural rubber, Wood flour.