Development of wood plastic composite crates and bins for packaging applications

Abstract

In packaging applications, wood, metal, glass, and carton materials are replaced by plastic materials due to their characteristics such as higher strength, durability, stiffness, lightweight, thermal stability, and chemical resistance. Hence, it has increased the environmental burden on the earth. Biodegradable material helps to reduce environmental issues, but obtaining similar properties as those of polymer is one of the challenges for any biodegradable materials. In order to reduce the usage of plastic, the present research work was deliberated to replace the plastic storage bins used as secondary or tertiary packaging applications by reinforcing polymer using natural flour; and to replace the polypropylene (PP) crates used as primary packaging to transport fruits and vegetables. Numerous composite materials were studied in this research, to find out the suitable composite materials for packaging applications. The selection of a proper material like polymer, coupling agent (CA), the concentration of the coupling agent, and wood flour led to providing an excellent quality of composite material. Different polymers such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), PP, and recycled PP (RPP) were reinforced using bamboo flour with and without coupling agent by varying the flour proportions from 20% to 50% and their mechanical properties were studied. These results show that the PP polymer was better in all the proportions when compared to the other two polymers. To optimize the concentration of the CA, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% bamboo/PP composites were prepared with the CA by varying the concentration level of the CA from 3% to 6% and their properties were compared with those of pure PP. The mechanical properties were increased while increasing the concentration of the coupling agent in all the proportions iv and declined after 5%. It was observed that 5%of the CA was optimum to provide higher mechanical properties. newline