DPR Industries markets liquid natural rubber products for use in rubber compounding and tire manufacturing.

DPR is particularly useful as a general rubber compounding ingredient because it is natural rubber-based and can be reacted over the entire cure spectrum of natural rubber. It is employed by the grinding wheel and friction product industries for the same reasons. DPR has an affinity to wet large amounts of dry ingredients and can be cured to a very hard matrix. These attributes are ideally suited for components such as grinding wheels and brake linings that must be processed with a high percentage of dry ingredients and ultimately fashioned into very hard products.

DPR® can be used as reactive processing aids and as reactive vehicles for rubber chemicals that must be dustless, pre-dispersed and/or pre-measured. The benefit is the liquid rubber is easy to process and becomes non-fugitive once the rubber article is cured.

The tire industry takes advantage of these inherent characteristics in two particular components of tire construction. The first is in the bead insulation/apex area where very stiff compounds are desired. One way to achieve this is to use a highly loaded carbon black compound with DPR as a reactive plasticizer so that processability can be achieved without sacrificing permanence of the compound once it is cured. Likewise, “skim-coat” compounds may require several Banbury passes before they are soft enough for application. Compound adhesion is critical and large amounts of plasticizer must be avoided. DPR can be used because of its reactivity. Once cured, it will not migrate over time as typical oils do.
 

DPR® based sealants make an important contribution to the construction, insulated glass, and sound damping markets. These compounds bring the permanence of butyl rubber to the end user in a single-component, easy to use tape or pre-shaped profile. In sound damping areas where application of solids is restricted, DPR® can be formulated for application as multi-component thermosets.