What is the difference between “vulcanised”, Polymerised and Re-vulcanised rubber?
During the manufacturing process of new tyres, virgin rubber is blended with carbon black, oils, sulphur and zinc oxides, etc and then heated to form a very strong and resilient material. This is called “vulcanised” rubber. It makes the modern tyre almost indestructible which is one of the reasons why many companies have had difficulty to effectively recycle tyres. Polymerised in this contents is referred to as a rebonded process where an adhesive is added to the rubber granules as a bonding agent. Generally polymerised products have a rougher texture. Re-vulcanised is a high tech re-bonding process identified by Molectra. It gives the ability to recycle crumb rubber to reproduce high quality rubber products, only with a sustainable tag.
