The Restraining of Vulcanization in Rubber Manufacture

Delayed-Action Accelerators During the past few years, considerable advance has been made in the ordinary method of compounding technic with respect to scorching. The advances fall essentially into two well-marked divisions, viz., the development of “delayed-action accelerators” and the addition of “vulcanization restrainers,” “inhibitors of prevulcanization,” or “antiscorch agents.” With a true delayed-action accelerator vulcanization should not occur until a certain period of time has elapsed, after which rapid vulcanization takes place. The existence of this “time lag” can be explained on the basis that the reputed accelerators are inactive, but on heating are decomposed into other substances which constitute the real accelerators. Some organic accelerators give a temperature lag, and though comparatively safe from prevulcanization in processing, they vulcanize only above a certain critical temperature. Hence, when the rubber mixture is heated, vulcanization does not take place until this temperature is attained. Such accelerators are not delayed-action accelerators in the narrower sense. In all organic accelerators the activity can be associated with a particular grouping, and in the simplest form of accelerator generally with a particular hydrogen atom. Most if not all delayed-action accelerators can be regarded as chemical derivatives of known powerful accelerators in which the place of the active hydrogen atom is occupied by a more or less easily displaceable organic grouping; the delayed-action accelerator is consequently often a compound, e. g., of the thio-ester or thio-ether (or even “thio-anhydride”) type, which itself strictly is not a vulcanization accelerator, but is capable of undergoing decomposition (e. g., “hydrolysis” or fission) with formation of one.