Abstract

Waste leather scraps were processed and sieved into a particle size of 212um. The sieve particle was then compounded with natural rubber at 0, 10, 20 and 30 pphr respectively, then analysed for hardness test, tensile strength, compression set, and solvent test. The results obtained reveal that as the filled leather scraps increased from 0-30 pphr, the hardness value increased from 21.66 – 32.33 IRHD. The same trend was also noticed in the results for tensile strength were the increase in the filler in the rubber matrix from 10-30 pphr also required a higher breaking load that as well increased the tensile strength from 2.5-4.5 Mpa. For the compression set, were the increase in leather scraps loadings from 0-30g, led to the percentage compression set increase from 10.9 percent to 5.3 percent which show that the higher the filler loading the better the percentage compression of the composite. The solvent test for N-hexane, acetic acid, xylene and CCL4 showed that the higher the loadings of the leather scraps the more solvent the compound absorbs, this was because more pore area were created with increase in filler loadings to retain more solvent, however, acetic acid absorbed the least solvent with 8.7 % being the least at 10pphr and 23.1 % being the highest at 30 pphr loading respectively.