The following conclusions may be drawn from the aforesaid
work. Grafting of cardanol onto natural rubber in the latex stage
has been carried out successfully using the redox initiator
system potassium persulfate/sodium thiosulfate. The Taguchi
method provides a simple, systematic, and efficient tool to
evaluate the effect of four different control factors on the
response variables percent grafting and grafting efficiency. The
optimum combination of the parameters are found to be
initiator concentration 2 phr, cardanol concentration 10 phr,
reaction temperature 65 °C, and reaction time 6 h, considering
both percent grafting and grafting efficiency. The percent
grafting found is to be 7.47% and the grafting efficiency is
78.93% for the optimum parameter combination. The analysis
of variance technique provides the percent contribution of
different control factors on percent grafting and grafting
efficiency. Cardanol concentration is observed to have the
highest effect on the yield contributing to the extent of 46.37%
on the percent grafting and 63.0% on the grafting efficiency.
The experimental results of percent grafting and grafting
efficiency are found to be in good agreement with the predicted
values as derived from regression analysis.