English Abstract

New Aspects of Rubber Mixing Technologies in Internal Mixers Takashi MORIBE Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Hiroshima Machinery Works, Nishi-Ku, Hiroshima, Japan Nippon Gomu Kyokaishi,(2008),81(12),509-515 General Review in Japanese Abstract Internal mixers have been dominant as rubber mixing equipments in technical rubber and tire industries for more than a century. Tangential and intermeshing rotors are two fundamental designs for internal mixers. In the recent decade, new materials and compounds have been developed such as silica/silane reinforced tire tread compounds in order to meet the global environment problems. The optimization of the distributive and dispersive mixing of various fillers in internal mixers should be required to improve the compound properties. Especially, the temperature control during mixing is becoming more and more important to control the reaction of chemicals and to reduce additional mixing stages for the production; therefore intermeshing mixers are area of interest in order to achieve the required properties for compounds. The paper describes various studies on the comparison of mixing characteristics between intermeshing and tangential mixers. The major advantage of intermeshing mixers is their higher cooling and mixing efficiency. Accordingly the intermeshing mixer with optimized state-of-the-art rotors has been developed in order to enhance the mixing performance. Keywords: Internal Mixer, Intermeshing Rotors, Silica Filled Compounds, Mixing Efficiency

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