Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
BIOMASS CONVERSION AND BIOREFINERY, cilt.12, sa.11, ss.5385-5396, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
Rubber, the raw material of many products we use in daily life, is obtained synthetically or naturally from plant sources. Some problems related to the use of synthetic rubber and increasing world population have caused inevitable searches for plants that are possible to be an alternative to rubber tree. Whether goat's beard (Tragopogon aureus Boiss) and spurge (Euphorbia stricta L.) plants could be an alternative natural rubber source or not was investigated in this study. Fresh or dried plants were extracted with water, acetone, and hexane, respectively. The amounts of substances soluble in water, acetone, and hexane were determined gravimetrically. The effects of temperature, time, and solid/liquid ratio parameters were studied. The amount of the extracted rubber, the desired final product, increased as the temperature, time, and solid/liquid ratio increased. It was found that the rubber ratio was higher in dry plant (4.73% for Tragopogon aureus Boiss, 5.01% for Euphorbia stricta L.) rather than in the fresh plant (3.76% for Tragopogon aureus Boiss, 4.9% for Euphorbia stricta L.). FTIR, GPC, and NMR analyses were performed to compare hexane extract with purchased cis-1,4-isoprene as the main structure of natural rubber. It was observed that the rubber had peaks compatible with the characteristic bands of polyisoprene. In addition, elemental analysis and proximate and ultimate analyses were performed. It was considered that some cultivation and genetic studies were useful for these plants to be used in the commercial production of natural rubber.