Processability Study of Natural Rubber Foam for Insulation Material in Building.

Abstract

The processability study of natural rubber foam for insulation material in building was investigated. Recently, the synthetic rubber e.g. polyurethane (PU) plays the important role in insulation material but its limitation is cost. Natural rubber (NR), which is naturally resource and low cost material, is selected to mix with polyurethane and fabricate into insulating foam. To study the effect of NR/PU ratio on the physical, mechanical and thermal properties of NR/PU foam, 10, 20, 30 , 40 and 50 phr of PU were added into 100 phr of NR. The cell morphology of all NR/PU foam is close cell and has good distribution. The amount of PU does not affect the compression set of NR/PU foam. The thermal conductivity decrease with increasing amount of PU. The thermal conductivity of NR/PU foam is 0.0745 – 0.138 W/mK which can comparable as normal insulation material at lower cost.