Due to its excellent properties, zinc oxide is widely used by multiple industries around the world such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and ceramics. But one of the biggest users of zinc oxide is the rubber industry and here are the key roles of zinc oxide for rubber industry that are making it an extremely important compound for the industry.

Activating the Curing System

For the rubber industry, zinc oxide would be combined with stearic acid and then producied zinc soap. The existence of zinc soap would then improve the zinc oxide’s solubility to form a complex. Later, the complex would be used together with sulfur in order to produce a vulcanizing agent which is essential to the rubber industry.

Enhancing the Vulcanized Rubber Anti-Aging Properties

In the vulcanization process, the bond created which is called the polysulfide bond will break. This process would be producing H2S which then would further accelerate the cracking process of rubber. Zinc oxide plays a key role by reacting with it and then forming new bonds of cross-linking. Because of this, the network of vulcanization would stabilize and then improving the rubber’s age resistance.

Creating Long-Lasting Rubber

Zinc oxide for rubber industry is extremely crucial since this compound would be responsible for producing rubber products that are fully functional and long-lasting. Zinc oxide is particularly important in the rubber industry for manufacturing tires.

Tires need to have several qualities that would make them safe to use such as heat and abrasion resistance. Tires need to be resistant to abrasion due to the contact with the asphalt, and the constant contact while spinning would produce heat and tires need to be also heat resistant.

This is why zinc oxide is particularly crucial in the tires industry since this compound would help the rubber for tires to be able to withstand high temperatures. Not only for tires, the heat resistance quality is also important for rubbers for engine parts and conveyor belts.

Zinc oxide would also reinforce the matrix of the rubber which would make it more resistant to wear and tear. This is extremely important for tires due to its constant contact with solid objects, especially asphalt, but also important to make excellent sole shoes.

Zinc oxide for rubber industry is also important due to its UV protection quality which will protect the rubber from degradation caused by ultraviolet rays.