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Preliminary Study on Photochemical Degradation of Natural Rubber Latex
Author(s) -
Ibrahim Suhawati,
Othman Nadras,
Mohd Nor Zairossani,
Ismail Hanafi
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
macromolecular symposia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.257
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1521-3900
pISSN - 1022-1360
DOI - 10.1002/masy.201600033
Subject(s) - natural rubber , degradation (telecommunications) , cleavage (geology) , polymer chemistry , chemistry , molar mass distribution , photochemistry , materials science , chemical engineering , composite material , organic chemistry , polymer , telecommunications , fracture (geology) , computer science , engineering
Summary Liquid natural rubber (LNR) is considered as a new material which can be obtained from degradation of natural rubber (NR). In this work, the degradation of NR latex using photochemical degradation under UV light has been studied. In this preliminary result, the degradation degree was found to depend on parameters such as dry rubber content (DRC) of latex and reaction temperature. At the optimized parameters, the molecular weight (Mn) of NR was able to reduce from about 500 kg/mol to as low as 13 kg/mol. The molecular structure of LNR obtained was similar to that the NR, however, the presence carbonyl and hydroxyl groups were observed on the LNR chain as a result of the chain cleavage.