Nonisothermal melt crystallization of PHB/babassu compounds

Abstract

Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB)/babassu compounds were prepared in a laboratory internal mixer with 10, 30, and 50 % by mass of fiber content. Nonisothermal melt crystallization behavior of PHB/babassu compounds was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry, and crystallization parameters were determined at cooling rates ranging between 2 and 32 °C min−1. Adding babassu fiber affected the melt crystallization behavior of PHB, and increasing filler content from 10 to 30 % has significant effects on the thermal characteristics of the system. Further increase in filler content from 30 to 50 % filler content has no effect on crystallization temperature and rate, but it has important positive consequences, once there is a considerably latitude in choosing the actual filler level in highly loaded PHB/babassu compounds without affecting processing characteristics. The melt crystallization kinetics of PHB/babassu compounds was analyzed by three empirical models widely used to represent nonisothermal polymer crystallization data: Pseudo-Avrami, Ozawa, and Mo. Kinetics analyses indicate that the Pseudo-Avrami model represented well the experimental data for both compounds in a wide interval of temperature, conversion, and cooling rates; the Ozawa model with two different sets of parameters, for low and high cooling rates, was found to correlate the data equally well, but over limited ranges of the variables, and the model proposed by Mo and collaborators did not adequately represent the experimental data for the systems and conditions tested.