Microwave pre-curing of natural rubber-compounding using a rectangular wave guide

This article presents a new method to pre-cure natural rubber-compounding (NRc) by using microwave energy at a frequency of 2.45 GHz with a rectangular wave guide. The influences of microwave power input, specimen thicknesses, and vulcanized sulfur contents on the dielectric and thermal characteristics and cross-linked contents of microwave-cured NRc are studied. Furthermore, a generalized mathematical model for predicting temperature distribution inside the specimen during pre-heating is proposed. Significant results show that microwave energy can produce partial cross-linking at temperatures below the actual vulcanizing process. The numerical results from the model agree well with the results from the experiments.