A new recycling technology (namely 'direct powder moulding') is proposed to produce large rubber parts from spent tyres without any addition of virgin materials or linking agents. Rubber pads were produced by compression moulding of rubber powder mixtures which were obtained by mechanical grinding of ground tyre rubbers. In this study, the effect of different powder mixtures on the final performances of the moulded parts was evaluated. Starting from three initial size distributions of the rubber powder, other binary and ternary blends were prepared, for a total of 15 different powder distributions. All these rubber mixtures were compression moulded to produce large pads. Differential scanning calorimetry of the rubber powders was carried out as well as tensile tests and dynamic mechanical analyses on samples extracted from the pads. It was found that the rubber powder distribution strongly affects the mechanical performances of the recycled rubber moulded products.

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This paper proposes a new foaming technology (solid-state foaming) to produce structural foams from waste thermosetting resins. The proposed technology is easy and does not require specific and expensive equipments. Solid tablets are produced by cold compaction of resin powder, and foam by heating in an oven. Composite foams can be produced by mixing fillers and resin powder before the cold compaction. In the experiment, an epoxy-polyester (EP-PE) resin powder, deriving from the waste of a manufacturer of domestic appliances, was used with montmorillonite (MMT) particles. Resulting foams with a filler content ranging from 0 to 10 wt% were characterized in terms of physical and mechanical properties (by compression tests). Although the effect of the MMT content seems to be negative for the adopted resin, the feasibility of producing composite foams by recycling waste industrial powders is shown. The properties of the unfilled foams are sufficient for many industrial applications.