Characterisation of Shoe Soling Material Prepared by using Rubber and Leather Solid Waste

Abstract

The ultimate aim of this research is to develop footwear soling materials from solid waste generated from leather industry. The Chrome shaving from the leather sector is used as a solid waste in this study. Styrene butadiene, Nitryl, Ethylene propylene monomer (EPDM) and Isoprene elastomers were used for this research. The rubber and chrome shavings mixes were prepared by using industrial two roll mill. Various propositions of rubbers, chrome shavings and nano fillers were characterised in this research. The developed soling materials were tested for physical testing like hardness, abrasion resistance, tensile strength, density and elongation at break and compared with compared with commercially available soling material. In this research four different experiments has been conducted among the four experiments the soling material prepared using a isoprene rubber-70 Phr and EPDM rubber - 30Phr with chrome shavings -50 Phr and KLN(Silica based) nano fillers- 7 Phr meets the required parameters of commercial soling material. Hence, it is concluded that chrome shaving wastes from tannery in soling material preparation is one of the best remedy for the environmental issues.