The Proöxygenic Role of Iron in the Oxidizability of Rubber
Abstract The influence of iron on the oxidizability of rubber, though not as a matter of fact neglected in the past, has perhaps not received sufficient attention. However, the various ways in which this metal and its derivatives have caused contamination are certainly too obvious to imagine that they have passed unobserved. As is known, traces of iron can be detected in latex at the time it is tapped, and regardless of the method of treatment which it undergoes later, the rubber has an opportunity at every step in its preparation to become further contaminated with iron. Milling, calendering, and molding are carried out with iron equipment, and the ingredients used in rubber compounding may contain more or lees iron, at least as impurities, even when they are not primarily iron compounds, as is the case of certain pigments. In short, manufacturing processes, contamination by iron from ingredients, adventious causes such as iron containers for latex, dust and various other causes which need not be enumerated, all contribute to the presence of iron in rubber. Certainly then iron cannot be a very dangerous element under ordinary conditions, for otherwise its harmful effects would have been recognized long ago, and would have led to the avoidance of iron in practice, as has happened in the case of copper. Nevertheless experiments of the authors to determine why vulcanization increases the oxidizability of rubber have led to the suspicion that iron may be harmful, and a desire to ascertain the role it plays in deterioration prompted the authors to carry out the experiments which are described in the present paper. The object of the work was thus limited, and it aimed not to settle the problem of the influence of iron on rubber, but rather to investigate in a simple manner in what way iron gets into a rubber mixture, in what form it exists, and what are its harmful effects. Incidental to this, some of the observations may perhaps be of some value in current practice.