Development of a prototype for the rubber latex industry to detect dry rubber content of fresh natural rubber latex using a novel measurement system with proton-electron transfer

Abstract Rubber latex industry has been looking for techniques to rapidly estimate the dry rubber content (DRC) of rubber latex with accuracy, at a low cost, and to be used by non-technical people in the field. The basis of electrical charge in terms of proton-electron transfer (P.E.TF) was used to develop a new prototype. The prototype was created with the P.E.TF system, two electrode probe detectors, and a new code program on Arduino board. The data was collected using the P.E.TF system of fresh natural rubber latex and presented as the P.E.TF number and the percentage of dry rubber content (%DRC). The standard method (ISO126:2005(E)) was used to calculate %DRC. The comparison of the %DRC measurement using the prototype and the standard method was studied. It was found that the new code program on Arduino board could evaluate the data. In real-time, it converted the P.E.TF number into %DRC on the LCD screen. The %DRC measurement using the prototype was close to that calculated using the standard method. The correlation between the two methods is 0.9814 of Rsqr. Therefore, the novel measurement system can replace the standard method for the %DRC measurement of fresh natural rubber latex. The prototype is simple, fast to detect, small, and low-cost without operator training.