Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

REUSE OF WASTE PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD IN POWDER FORM AS FILLER IN NATURAL RUBBER COMPOSITE AND ITS EVALUATION OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

S. Shylin, H. Jose and R.A. Sankaran

Abstract

The current study deal with the reuse of waste printed circuit board (WPCB) from electronic equipments in powder form. An effort is made to utilize the Non-Metallic Materials from WPCB as filler in Natural rubber (NR). The Non-metallic materials from WPCBs are transformed into powder and mixed with pure NR to form a rubber composite. The size of filler powder is 212 micron, and two-roll open mill technique is used to prepare the NR composite. The maximum filler loading is 20 phr (parts per hundreds of rubber). The sample is prepared as per ASTM standards and mechanical properties such as tensile strength, hardness and elongation are also investigated. The voids and the dispersion of the powder in the NR composite are evaluated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The Result shows that the inclusion of printed circuit board powder in the composite improved the hardness and used as alternative filler in rubber pads and mat materials. From this study, it is evident that the recycled WPCB converted to powder can be used to make several useful products.