Thermal Conductivity Measurement of Novel Waste Tire Rubber-Polypropylene Composite

As the manufacturing and use of vehicles are increasing globally, the disposal and recycling of waste tire have become a major environmental issue when they are out of service life. One of the potential recycling processes is turning the waste tire into a useful composite as insulating material. The present work produced a blended composite based on waste tire rubber (425 µm) and virgin polypropylene granules in a 4:1 ratio through a single screw filament extruder under controlled conditions. The thermal conductivity of the newly developed insulating material was measured using an in-house fabricated experimental setup built in accordance with ASTM D5470. Since waste tire rubber has good insulating property, it can be combined with thermoplastic materials and converted into insulating material for various thermal applications.