Development and characterization of rice husk polypropylene composites

Abstract

Due to non biodegradable nature of plastics, there is accumulation of these materials in the environment. Various means of its disposal such as recycling, incineration, pyrolysis, biodegradation are available but these processes require lot of energy and time. Therefore utilization of waste plastics for making road and generation of fuels are the better options. Lignocellulosic materials such as rice husk, abundantly available in nature can be used with polypropylene (commodity plastics) for making thermoplastic composites. Use of rice husk in polypropylene reduce the cost and makes the composite material biodegradable. Poor compatibility between rice husk (hydrophilic) and polypropylene (hydrophobic) results lower mechanical strength in rice husk polypropylene composites. Therefore to make the effective utilization of these materials, addition of compatibilizer or coupling agent is must. In the present study, various properties such as mechanical, chemical, thermal of rice husk polypropylene (RHPP) composites have been studied. Earlier most of the work was focused on the use of compatibilizer and coupling agents for enhancing the mechanical properties, tensile strength in particular. Most commonly used compatibilizer was maleic anhydride polypropylene (MAPP), and coupling agents used were silnae, titanate and zirconate. Here emphasis have been given on detail studies of mechanical properties such as tensile strength, impact strength, modulus, hardness, and abrasion resistance of rice husk polypropylene (RHPP) composites for exploring the new applications. Use of fillers/additives affects the properties of plastics significantly. Therefore additives such as talc, silica, mica, calcium carbonate, wollastonite, and zirconium oxide have been selected and their effect on various properties such as mechanical, chemical and thermal of RHPP composites have been studied. In chapter one, effect of titanate coupling agent on the mechanical properties of RHPP composites was studied.