Biir / Poe Blend

Butyl rubber (polyisobutylene-co-isoprene (IIR)) is a very important commercial elastomer with many desirable physical properties, such as low air permeability and broad damping properties. The principal uses of this material are in the tire industry for the preparation of inner tubes and inner liners of passenger car tires. Despite these unique properties, there are some deficiencies associated with this polymer, mainly poor compatibility with other materials, including elastomer, plastics and carbon black. This poor compatibility greatly limits the application of butyl rubber in many application areas. In fact, the improvement of interfacial adhesion among butyl rubber has been an intense research area for some time. On other hand, polyolefin elastomers (POEs) are available with properties ranging from amorphous to crystalline, and low to very high molecular weight, providing superior elasticity, toughness and low temperature ductility and offer a unique combination of flexibility and toughness, making them a material of choice for a wide variety of applications. They are versatile polymers that offer excellent adhesion at high and low temperatures, outstanding processability, and superior levels of performance in packaging and other applications. Further advantages include optimize processing and end-use performance, excellent thermal stability and UV resistance. POE’s cover a range of melt index and comonomer content (density) for use in several applications. The cost effectiveness of POE is limited by the combination of reduced flowability and/or softness requirements. The ability to extend POE with conventional process oils allows greater flexibility to compounder to tailor the performance of the product. Here retention of physical properties can be achieved by increased molecular weight of POE with addition of oil without compromising with processibility. Here the research is being made on the binary blend containing IIR and POE (IIR/POE blend). The work is to be done for testing an array of compounded butyl rubber with 10%, 15%, and 20% POE. It is to be expected that the IIR/POE blend will have dramatically better properties as POE levels rise. This development in the area of butyl rubber/POE blend may give the more advantageous characteristics of the presently available butyl compound without compromising the processibility characteristics of parent compound at moderate cost. Thus the modified form of butyl can have a set of more desirable properties and therefore it may be used more advantageously. Keywords— polymer blend, butyl rubber, BIIR, polyolefin elastomer (POE).