Composition of Color Substances of Hevea Brasiliensis Natural Rubber
Abstract It is accepted that NR gives naturally occurring color, which restrict many applications such as light-color products. Therefore, characterization of color substances presenting in NR is very useful to develop the certain methodology to eliminate them completely or partly from NR in the future. In this work, an attempt was made to purify and characterize the color substances extracted from various fractions of Hevea rubber latex by certain methods, using high-resolution structural characterization techniques. It was found that the content of color substances extracted from fresh latex (FL), rubber cream, bottom fraction (BF), Frey Wyssling (FW) particles and STR 20 were different. Based on the high-resolution spectroscopic analyzes, it was found that the color substances extracted from NR were composed of carotenoids, tocotrienol esters, fatty alcohol esters, tocotrienols, unsaturated fatty acids, fatty alcohols, diglyceride and monoglyceride. The results will be useful for rubber-technologist to identify the origin to make obnoxious color in natural rubber, especially in some applications which are restricted by such the color.