Today, rubber materials are found everywhere and are available in areas such as transportation, health services and consumer products. Their durability, flexibility and resistance to oil make them essential, but these same qualities are caused by strong chemical bonds called crosslinking, which also makes them difficult to recover. Most of the rubber used is either burned or sent to a landfill, causing serious environmental problems.
Dr. Shigetaka Hayano, Kazuki Kumazawa, Kosuke Isobe, Takuro Sakurai and Dr. Shengyang Wang of Zeon Corporation in Japan have proposed new solutions to this challenge. They showed how to break down rubber made of cyclopentene, a compound used to create certain synthetic rubbers and therefore can be reused. Their findings are shared in the journal RSC Advances.
Dr. Hayano’s team created three different types of rubber using Cyclopentene and other ingredients. These rubber types are known for their tough and strong combination, making them particularly difficult to break down. But with a special catalyst, a substance that can speed up chemical reactions without consuming in the process, they even destroy the hardened, processed version of these rubbers. Most notably, they were able to restore the original building block Cyclopentenene using a milder method than usually required in the factory.
Perhaps the most surprising part of their success is that they can only use a small amount of catalyst and moderate heat to completely break down the treated rubber samples. Dr. Hayano repeated this process using other eraser types and obtained similar results. What remains are reusable chemicals and harmless black residues from the original material. “This study provides new strategies for rubber waste made from cyclopentene-based rubber under relatively mild conditions, thus contributing to circular economy and resource efficiency,” said Dr Hayano.
Dr. Hayano and colleagues also show that their method works not only on pure cycloene rubbers, but also on cycloene-based copolymer rubbers, which include other ingredients such as Norbornene, such as substances commonly used in rubber and resin production, dicyclopentAdiene, which can make strong plastics as well as another chemical chemical. This opens the door to recycling a wider range of rubber products. It proves that even after heat treatment and chemical reinforcement, these materials can be broken down and reused, which is the step to make the rubber harder and longer lasting.
This progress marks a valuable step in rubber recycling. Most prior art allows only grinding or burning used rubber, thereby wasting resources. However, this new approach can turn the rubber into its original part, maintaining its value and reducing damage to the planet. The benefits for industries that deal with large amounts of rubber waste can be huge.
Ultimately, Dr. Hayano’s research shows that treated rubber (once it is deemed impossible to chemically recover) can actually be converted back to useful materials. This technology provides promising ways for environmentally friendly rubber use and reuse, supporting global efforts to reduce waste and promote smarter resource use.
Journal Reference
Hayano S., Kumazawa K., Isobe K., Sakurai T., Wang S. RSC Advanceds2024. RSCAdv. , 2024, 14, 37143-37154. doi:
About the Author
Dr. Shigetaka Hayano He is a polymer scientist working at the Zeon Corporation R&D Center. After receiving his PhD from Kyoto University in 2000, he joined Zeon Corporation as a researcher. Dr. Hayano is currently responsible for maintaining and building Zeon’s core polymer technology. Although his main field is polymer chemistry, his research methods are broad and interdisciplinary. His research goal is not only to achieve academic results in our real society, but to implement them in our real society.
Dr. Shengyang Wang She received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Minnesota and joined Zeon Corporation in Japan after graduation. She is currently located in Monozukuri Studio in Zeon, a innovation-driven hub inspired by the concept of “art of making things” in Japan. Her work focuses on the design, synthesis and development of novel functional polymers targeting real-world applications and market impacts.
