Characterization and Tensile Properties of Self-healing Chitin-Devulcanized Ethylene Propylene Rubber (EPDM)—Waste Natural Rubber Blend

Heat healable devulcanized EPDM waste-NR (DEPDMw-NR) blends with nano-chitin (0–7 phr) loading were successfully prepared with insertion of dry milling chitin. The cure characteristic of DEPDMw-NR shown no significant changes of ts2 and t90 for all nano-chitin loading except at 7 phr nano-chitin found at 1.39 min and 6.73 min, respectively. The effect of nano-chitin addition was evaluated on its tensile properties before and after self-heat healable. The utilization of nano-chitin as self-healing agent shown a comparable tensile strength at 1phr at 9.6 MPa as compared to control at 9.9 MPa due to enhanced interaction between chitin and DEPDMw-NR as supported by FTIR. On contrary, after the heat healable process, chitin plays a major role in self-healing mechanism with increment of its loading up to 7 phr at 0.835 MPa as compared to 0.269 MPa in control. The tensile strain before the heat healable process was found decrement trend up to 5 phr of nano-chitin compared to control owing to the restriction mobility of rubber molecular chain. However, slightly increment depicted in strain after heat healable up to 5 phr showing the addition of chitin improve the elastic properties of DEPDMw-NR.