Panu Danwanichakul, Savalee Jaroenkarn, Pore Jumpathi, and Duangkamol Dechojarassri

pp. 1071 - 1082

Abstract

The transport mechanism of several pure liquid organic substances into natural rubber chips composed of different fillers was investigated. It was found that, for the same type of chips, the Fickian diffusion of toluene was the fastest, followed by m-xylene, water and p-cresol. The toluene uptake was highest which was as high as 3.42 times of the chip weight. This was closely followed by m-xylene uptake, which was much higher than p-cresol uptake and water uptake which was only 0.02 times of the chip weight, implying that natural rubber could be used to remove these organic substances contaminated in water. The desorption of substances into air followed the similar trend as sorption. Besides, for any substances, the results
showed that unfilled chips had the largest sorption capacity, followed by ones with calcium carbonate and carbon black.