3 Risks Of Zinc Oxide Used In Rubber Vulcanization Process

We found a lot of zinc oxide used in rubber. However, you might have no idea that this practice has many serious dangerous effects. Here, we have a list of the reasons zinc oxide is considered a dangerous practice in the rubber industry.

Zinc Toxic is a Poisonous Material

During rubber manufacturing, it produces smoke that can cause various health problems.

It happens a lot to people who work with zinc oxide for a long time. The long exposure of this fume can cause health problems. It even leads to death without proper treatment.

Zinc oxide toxicity is also harmful to aquatic organisms. The effect on the surroundings could be severe.

Energy Usage

Zinc oxide addition to the rubber vulcanization process saves more energy. It saves 16% energy consumption compared to vulcanization without using zinc oxide as a primary activator.

The number seems amazing. However, you should understand that this process still needs a huge amount of energy. Moreover, the process of changing the raw material into zinc oxide itself requires more energy.

So, the zinc oxide used in rubber might save more energy for the rubber manufacturing itself. However, zinc oxide production itself is one of the manufacturing stages that use a high amount of energy.

Mostly, it is because you need to turn zinc raw material into vapor and then cool it down to get the zinc oxide powder. The vaporization process is the energy-consuming part of this whole system.

Disposal Problems

Currently, we have no safest method to dispose of zinc oxide after usage for rubber vulcanization. Mostly, companies store it in certain places which will be processed later.

However, it requires a long time to wait and finish. In some cases, many companies dump the waste into the wild, which causes significant environmental effects.

The Substitution/Alternative

We haven’t found the best alternative material to replace the zinc oxide used in the rubber vulcanization process. The closest one is magnesium oxide.

However, its performance is not comparable to zinc oxide. Currently, we still consider zinc oxide the best choice. Many companies keep using it to provide the high demand for rubber products.

Final Words

We only need to wait until the experts find the best solution for replacing zinc oxide used in rubber vulcanization. We can minimize the effect by saving rubber usage. Thus, the production of this product won’t increase the usage of zinc oxide as well.