What is Rubbber?

What is Rubbber?

Rubbber is a strong, waterproof and elastic substance made from the juice of a tropical tree or produced chemically.rubbber It has many uses including shoes, hoses and automobile and aircraft tires.rubbber It is also used in a variety of medical devices and pacifiers.

Natural rubber comes from a milky white liquid called latex that drips from the bark of certain tropical and subtropical trees, including the Hevea brasiliensis.rubbber The first people to use rubber were Mesoamericans, who dipped cloth into the latex for clothing and footwear.rubbber In the 1830s, when Charles Goodyear discovered a process to make the rubber he collected more useful, "rubber fever" gripped Europe.

He soaked fabric into the liquid and then laminated it together to form balloon cloth, which was used for raincoats.rubbber He also experimented with coating fabric with rubber dissolved in turpentine to make waterproof boots and bottles.rubbber His wife Clarissa was less enamoured of the new material and used it for erasing pencil marks, hence the name for the material - rubber.

Rubber is a very complex biopolymer containing numerous crosslinked molecules of isoprene.rubbber Because the molecule has a long chain of carbon atoms, it is not easily cleaved by enzymes.rubbber This makes microbial degradation of natural and synthetic polyisoprenoids a difficult problem. However, two nonhomologous enzymes were recently found in strains of the bacteria Xanthomonas and Streptomyces that can degrade polyisoprenoids. These enzymes may help in developing better methods to speed up the microbial degradation of rubber and other industrial polymers.

The current global demand for rubber is putting pressure on biodiversity in rainforests as land is cleared for rubber plantations.rubbber In addition, the processing of natural rubber is an energy intensive industry. The use of natural rubber is also a health risk due to its toxicity. This is particularly true for rubber gloves, which are often contaminated with heavy metals like lead and cadmium.

When the demand for natural rubber is high, the elastomer neoprene is frequently substituted as it has many of the same properties at a lower cost.rubbber The production of neoprene and other elastomers involves a number of steps, including the extraction of oil and natural gas from the earth, which is combined to produce naphtha. This is then used to make monomers such as styrene and butadiene. These monomers then go through a process known as vulcanization to form the complex, durable and flexible rubber that we know and love.

The most important part of the vulcanization process is the heat.rubbber This is produced by heating a mixture of sulphur, accelerator and activator at about 373-415 K. The resulting vulcanised rubber is more resistant to water, oxidation and organic solvents than untreated rubber. It is more elastic, has a higher strength-to-weight ratio and is resistant to cracking. It can be molded to a wide range of shapes and sizes. This is one of the most widely used elastomers in the world. It is used in a wide range of products from car and airplane tires to surgical gloves and medical devices.