Processing high-viscous caoutchouc compounds

摘要

The trend in the tire industry is toward using increasingly high viscous natural rubber compounds for special applications such as truck tread. Due to their limits concerning temperature and homogeneity, standard cold-feed extruders cannot process these hard natural rubber compounds efficiently. This is the reason for a renewed interest in hot-feed extruders, which have been neglected for several decades. From an economic point of view, warm-feed extruders can run these special applications more efficiently, even when taking initial investment costs for peripheral equipment and the higher operating costs into account.