Outdoor Floor Tiles Derived from Natural Rubber and Polyurethane Compos

Usage of polymer-based products, especially automobile tyres and plastics has been increased and their negative impacts on the environment and human beings have been increased in parallel. Not only polymer products but also agricultural wastes are generated in massive quantities, and they pose serious environmental problems like air pollution when they burn and leaching of hazardous and toxic chemicals when they dump in landfills, quarries, rivers, and oceans. Agricultural waste like rice husks has a compound with economic value. Instead of dumping and burning them, extraction and utilization of that compound in the formulation of new products is an advantage for waste management as well as economic growth. Hence, it is mandatory to recycle the above-mentioned wastes or produce new products such as outdoor floor coverings. Polymer matrices-based outdoor floor coverings are a small, but it is a growing sector in the world floor coverings market. This work aimed to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing silica extracted from rice husk ash and waste tyre treads with a natural rubber matrix to develop a novel composite with enhanced properties especially for floor covering products.

Autorentext

J'ai réalisé ce travail de recherche dans le cadre de mes études de troisième cycle en Master of Philosophy, en sciences appliquées et technologie à l'Université Uva Wellassa, Sri Lanka, en 2021.