Through the analysis of the chemical composition of natural rubber, it is found that its basic composition is isoprene. So inspired people to use isoprene as a monomer for polymerization reaction to get synthetic rubber, called isoprene rubber. The structure and properties of isoprene rubber are basically the same as those of natural rubber. At that time, isoprene could only be obtained from turpentine, and the source of raw materials was limited, while butadiene was rich. Therefore, a series of synthetic rubbers were developed based on butadiene. Such as cis-1,4-polybutadiene rubber, styrene butadiene rubber, nitrile rubber and chloroprene rubber.
With the development of petrochemical industry, various gases such as ethylene, propylene, butene, isobutene, butane, pentene and isopentene can be obtained from oilfield gas and refinery gas through high temperature cracking and separation and purification. They are good raw materials for manufacturing synthetic rubber.
In the world’s rubber production, natural rubber only accounts for about 15%, and the rest is synthetic rubber. There are many kinds of synthetic rubber with different properties, which can replace or even surpass natural rubber in many occasions. Synthetic rubber can be divided into general rubber and special rubber. For example, SBR accounts for 60% of synthetic rubber output; The second was cis-1,4-polybutadiene rubber, accounting for 15%; In addition, there are isoprene rubber, chloroprene rubber, sodium butyrate rubber, ethylene propylene rubber, butyl rubber, etc., which are all general purpose rubber.