• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.257-262
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• 2020

Vehicle wiper blades are typically treated with chlorine to lower their friction coefficient with the windshield surface. In this study, a chlorinated, natural rubber (NR) vehicle wiper blade was characterized using a pyrolytic technique. Unchlorinated and chlorinated wiper blades were pyrolyzed and the pyrolysis products were analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Besides isoprene and dipentene, the other principal pyrolysis products such as 1,5,8-p-menthatriene (MTT) and p,α-dimethylstyrene (DMS) were observed. The MTT and DMS ratios did not vary for the chlorinated nor unchlorinated samples when the entire rubber lip of the wiper blade was pyrolyzed. However, when only the lip surface of the wiper blade rubber was pyrolyzed (via scratching with a knife) the relative ratios of the chlorinated sample were much greater than those of the unchlorinated sample. As MTT is produced from the conjugated backbone of chlorinated NR that forms through HCl elimination during initial pyrolysis, and DMS is generated by the dehydrogenation of MTT, these two products could be used as markers for detecting chlorinated NR.