Abstract
All over the world, polyethylene wastes has been found littered on the streets of most communities and states. Palm kernel shell (agricultural waste) constitutes dirt and environmental pollution. The aim of this research was to study the potentials of palm kernel shell (PKS) filler as reinforcement for low density polyethylene (LDPE) waste. LDPE-Palm kernel shell composites of varying ratio (100:0, 90:10, 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, 50:50) of LDPE to PKS respectively were produced using the compression moulding technique. Mechanical properties such as water absorption, hardness, young’s modulus and tensile strength of the composites were found to increase with increasing PKS loading. The results showed that composites containing 40% of PKS gave the highest tensile strength corresponding to 18.42MPa. The results also indicated that the composites with 50% filler loading gave the highest hardness of 84.25A and water absorption rate which stood at 3.1%. The elongation at break was found to decrease with increasing filler content. The scanning electron micrograph (SEM) obtained revealed that the composites with 20% and 50% palm kernel shell had voids and surface cracks.
Highlights
Growing environmental awareness has resulted in renewed interest in the use of natural materials for different applications considering the serious environmental problems caused by the growing consumption of synthetic polymers
The results showed that composites containing 40% of palm kernel shell (PKS) gave the highest tensile strength corresponding to 18.42MPa
Particles are wetted by the polymer and the analysis clearly showed differences in microstructure of the composites produced by varying the PKS content
Summary
Growing environmental awareness has resulted in renewed interest in the use of natural materials for different applications considering the serious environmental problems caused by the growing consumption of synthetic polymers. Advantages of natural fibers over conventional reinforcement such as glass or carbon fibers are of lower cost, low density, low biodegradability as well as high specific properties (AI-Kaabi et al, 2005). Natural organic fibers from renewable natural resources often have potential to act as biodegradable reinforcing material alternative for the use of glass or carbon fiber and inorganic fillers (Bledzki et al, 1999). In general the utilization of lignocelluloses materials in the production of plastic composites is becoming more attractive, for low cost and high volume applications. Lignocellulosic-based filler are derived from renewable resources, available in relative abundance; the potential of which has not been really tapped. Characterization of Low Density Polyethylene Waste Filled With Palm Kernel Shell these fillers have a number of interesting mechanical and physical properties. Palm kernel shell (PKS) is one of the lignocellulosics bio fibers derived from palm kernel waste (Averous et al, 2005)
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