Citation: Peng Liu. Chemical recovery of waste sulfur-vulcanized carbon-chain rubbers by selective chain scission: Current status, challenges and perspectives[J]. Chinese Chemical Letters, ;2026, 37(6): 112086. doi: 10.1016/j.cclet.2025.112086 shu

Chemical recovery of waste sulfur-vulcanized carbon-chain rubbers by selective chain scission: Current status, challenges and perspectives

Peng Liu

State Key Laboratory of Natural Product Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China

pliu@lzu.edu.cn

Received Date: 1 August 2025
Revised Date: 5 November 2025
Accepted Date: 6 November 2025
Available Online: 7 November 2025

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Carbon-chain rubbers have been widely used in many fields including transportation, medicine, construction, and everyday life, owing to their excellent flexibility. Now, waste rubbers have caused serious environmental pollution and resource waste. Chemical recovery is expected to provide a solution to solve these problems fundamentally. Here, the recent progress in selective chain scissions of the waste sulfur-vulcanized carbon-chain rubbers for reuse was reviewed. Based on the different devulcanization approaches, the polysulfide crosslinking chains or carbon chains were broken and the linear or branched degraded products could be obtained as structural prepolymers for new rubber products. After a comprehensive literature review on the effect of the molecular composition and topology of the devulcanized and degraded products on the new rubbers, the future perspectives were proposed.
- Waste sulfur-vulcanized carbon-chain rubbers,
- Chemical recovery,
- Selective chain scission,
- Molecular composition and topology,
- Structural prepolymers
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