Abstract
Two types of single use plastic films were used to study the effect of hot climate conditions of Saudi Arabia during a six-month experiment. The objective of the study is to understand the degradation behavior of the single use packaging films under direct sunlight exposure with variation in humidity. The films were kept on a specially designed experimental setup. The films were analyzed every month with respect to morphology, spectroscopy, thermal and mechanical properties. The microscopic images showed initiation of cracks on the exterior of films. Mechanical properties such as tensile strength and tensile modulus were measured and a decrease of 17 and 7% from the virgin material was noticed. The thermal and flammability properties also showed a decrease which confirmed the ageing of the films due to the climatic conditions. The water contact angle showed 20% decrease which indicated the effect of the weathering conditions to make the films less hydrophobic. The degraded packaging films after the exposure could be used as recycling component for the preparation of reusable single use plastic compounds.
Highlights
Due to their versatile nature, plastics are becoming the essential ingredients to provide quality to human life
Optical microscopy is considered as a quick technique to follow the changes in the morphology of aged packaging films.[32]
In the case of transmission mode, the light passes through the film and the surface is shown in the image
Summary
Due to their versatile nature, plastics are becoming the essential ingredients to provide quality to human life. They can even substitute metals in terms of use and applications because of their flexibility, toughness, excellent barrier and physical properties and ease of fabrication.[1,2,3,4] Plastics can be broadly classified into commodity plastics and engineering plastics Commodity plastics such as Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) account for approximately 90 per cent of the global plastic demand.[5] Plastic bags, straws, water bottles, coffee cups, packaging materials and many other products are manufactured using these commodity plastics and are considered as disposable plastics or single use plastics. Most of the countries are trying to reduce the consumption of single use plastics so that the amount of waste could be limited
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