Green Functional Ingredients

One of the approaches to develop sustainable rubber products is to replace petroleum-based materials with renewable and sustainable materials. Many global tire manufacturers have committed to using entirely sustainable materials for tire production by 2050. This requires the development of suitable bio-based raw materials, from bio-based elastomers to renewable ingredients. Rubber products generally consist of complicated material formulations, including more than ten kinds of ingredients such as activators, processing oils, antioxidants, and fillers, to tune the processing, curing, and physicochemical properties of the rubbers. This chapter aims to provide an overview of three types of bio-based materials to potentially replace petroleum-based activators, processing oils, and antioxidants, and discuss their impacts on the overall performance of rubber systems.