Development of natural rubber based compounds for manufacture of abrasion resistant gloves

Abstract

Industrial glove industry is a glooming industry which focuses performance enhancement with lowest possible cost. Abrasion resistance is one of the main performance indicators of an industrial glove. Abrasion resistance was improved in the study using reinforcing filler material and a coupling agent with a minimum cost. Surfynol was selected as the best dispersion agent to couple with fume silica and precipitated silica from a range of dispersion agents. Both silica materials were optimized for loading level and fume silica was selected as the filler with most abrasion resistance. The optimized loading level for fume silica was 7 parts per hundred rubber. Silane was used as the coupling agent for the semi-reinforcing filler material and it was optimized as 0.5 parts per hundred rubber for the best abrasion performance. The samples were tested and validated for abrasion resistance, tensile strength, cut resistance, tear resistance, puncture resistance, stiffness, grip and aging. Microscopic view of fume silica loaded glove sample was compared with that of calcium carbonate loaded glove sample and validated for subject of uniformity of coating layers. Abrasion resistance was improved by using reinforcing filler fume silica instead of non-reinforcing filler calcium carbonate. Silane was used as the coupling agent and it was optimized for the best abrasion performance. This newly developed receipt helped to improve the abrasion resistance by 6 times compared to traditionally manufactured gloves out of natural rubber latex filled with non-reinforcing filler calcium carbonate.