Research Findings of Eucommia Gum
In recent years, with scientists' in-depth research on gutta-percha gum, we found that eucommia ulmoides grew in East Asia from the beginning, and spread from East Asia through Siberia and Central Asia to Europe, North America, and other regions during the Oligocene. When the Quaternary Ice Age came, it was left in China. With the development of science and technology, its value and function are gradually being recognized and exploited by people.
The Support of the Two Major Elements of Gutta-percha
1. The unique properties of eucommia gum adapt to social development and human needs for new materials
As we all know, most rubber plants in the world only contain cis-isoprene rubber, while natural eucommia gum is a typical trans-isoprene rubber. Because of its unique anti-molecular structure-polyisoprene, it contains incomparable characteristics of other materials, such as the three-stage characteristics of the vulcanization process, excellent blending properties, excellent integration characteristics, excellent processability and other characteristics .
At the same time, eucommia gum also exhibits extremely excellent impact resistance, fatigue resistance, abrasion resistance, shape memory function, sealing and anti-corrosion performance, shock absorption and noise reduction performance, non-cytotoxicity and other characteristics, so that it can be widely used Tire manufacturing, auto parts manufacturing, aerospace, defense, shipbuilding and other fields.
Take the tire application as an example: the manufacture of tires consumes 70% of the world's rubber resources, as consumers' demand for safe, energy-saving and long-life tires is increasing. In view of the excellent wear resistance, fatigue resistance, and low heat build-up properties of eucommia ulmoides, adding only a small amount of eucommia ulmoides to tire tread rubber can meet the needs of high-performance wear-resistant and long-life tires. In 2018, GM took the lead in the industry to realize the continuous production of synthetic eucommia rubber (TPI) in all-steel radial tires, which greatly improved product performance and passed the identification of scientific and technological achievements to reach the international advanced level. The Maxima XR290 recently launched on the market uses eucommia rubber material and is a veritable eucommia tire. Eucommia rubber tires can not only improve the tire's block resistance, super abrasion resistance, but also resistance to flexure and cracking and high-speed durability, and the mileage can also be increased by more than 30%.
2. Eucommia gum is about to develop several new rubber materials
Eucommia gum has a high molecular weight and a narrow distribution. By adding other polymers, it can exhibit physical properties that various polymers cannot display alone, creating a new polymer mixture, which has great strategic value and a wide range of potential needs.
Eucommia gum is blended or modified with other polymer materials to develop damping and shock absorption materials, noise reduction and noise reduction, shielding materials, memory functional materials and plastic alloys, TPVs and shape memory materials based on Eucommia gum. Through the sulfonation of eucommia gum, new high-strength adhesives can be developed, and so on.
Modifications such as epoxidation and grafting of eucommia rubber will enable the development of materials that improve coating corrosion resistance, elastic flame retardant materials, and so on.
