Morphological and chemical study of recycled synthetic rubber tire crumbs by using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive analysis

Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate the structure and chemistry of recycled synthetic rubber tire crumbs. It comprises the microscopic structure description of rubbers, separation of component phases and determination of chemical elements of additives that we use. For this purpose we have used scanning electronic microscope (SEM) JEOL6380LV equipped with the system of dispersive of energy spectroscopy (EDS). The rubber samples were collected from different mini soccer fields in Albania that use synthetic grass, where the rubber is used as filler increasing the stability and the elastic properties of the synthetic grass. The samples were analyzed as crumbs, as taken from the fields. Crumb metal infill a sustainable metal free and should not contain liberated fibers in an amount that exceed 0.01% of the total weight f crumb rubber. So far, we have studied 7 different crumbs of recycled synthetic rubber tire. Through the images provided by SEM we could study the microstructure of our samples. Also, after conducting an EDX spectrum analysis, we observed additives in the recyclable materials.