Moringa oleifera (Drum Stick Vegetable Fibre) Based Nanocomposites with Natural Rubber: Preparation and Characterizations

Abstract

Natural fibres have recently become attractive to scientific community as an alternative reinforcement for fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites. As compared to conventional fibres, such as glass and carbon FRPs have low cost, fairly good mechanical properties, ecofriendly and bio-degradability characteristics. In the present work, bio based nanocomposites were successfully developed using cellulose nano whisker as filler in natural rubber latex by water evaporation method. The cellulose nano whisker were prepared from “Moringa oleifera” (Drum Stick vegetable Fibre) by acid hydrolysis. The morphology of cellulose whiskers/NR nanocomposites was investigated by Scanning Electron Microscope. The presence of nano cellulose whiskers (CW) in the NR matrix was observed by using Fourier transfer-infra red (FTIR) spectroscopy. The tensile properties such as tensile strength, tensile modules and elongation at break were measured by Universal Testing Machine. Thermal degradation of the nanocomposites were also analyzed using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The result of the study shows that CW in the nanocomposites prepared during this study are randomly oriented and distributed homogeneously throughout the matrix. The FTIR analysis provided clear evidence of the presence of nano CW in the NR matrix that can be observed by the absorption peaks at 1033 and 1057 cm−1 assigned to C–O stretching of cellulose and TGA analysis showed the thermal stability of the nanocomposites increased with increasing CW, tensile strength and modulus values were also increased with CW addition. Hence the present study shows that the cellulose nano whiskers from Moringa oleifera has improved the properties of natural rubber based composite and can be considered as a good natural reinforcing material for future applications.