Deodorizing effects of sepiolite on odorous volatile organic compounds of natural rubber latex films

Abstract

This study reports the efficiency of sepiolite in reducing odorous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from natural rubber. Natural rubber latex (NRL) films with various content of sepiolite were prepared, ranging from 0 to 2.0 parts per hundred rubbers. The presence of odous VOCs in neat NRL films and NRL/sepiolite films has been confirmed by using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Most of odorous VOCs with odor detection threshold (ODT) of less than 0.1 ppm were significantly reduced in the presence of sepiolite. The result of dynamic olfactometry analysis also shows a negative correlation between odor concentration and the sepiolite content. The addition of 2.0 phr sepiolite in NRL/sepiolite-T and NRL/sepiolite-C reduced the odor concentration of NRL films by 69.1% and 59.4%, respectively. This proves that the mesoporous sepiolite-T adsorbed more odorous VOCs in the NRL films, as compared to macroporous sepiolite-C. Thus sepiolite-T is a promising deodoriz er for NRL films due to its higher odorous VOCs adsorption potentials.