Utilization of waste chicken feather for the preparation of eco-friendly and sustainable composite

Abstract

Waste material from a poultry farm, especially chicken feathers, is going to be a big concern for a clean environment as the quantity is mounting day by day. Just discarding waste chicken feathers are neither cost-effective nor eco-friendly. On the other hand, the upward demand for the synthetic polymer is also a huge obstacle in the way of a green environment. Synthetic polymers are not only responsible for polluting the environment but also hampering daily life. A significant challenge for a clean and sustainable environment is waste disposal as well as minimizing non-degradable polymers. In this research, we utilized discarded chicken feathers as a reinforcing agent and unsaturated polyester resin (UPR), synthetic polymer, as a matrix material for the preparation of composite through hand-lay-up technique. A number of percentages (2, 5, 7, 10, 12, and 15% by weight) of waste chicken feathers were added to the matrix for the enhancement of mechanical properties. The acquired results from the mechanical tests (tensile strength (TS), tensile modulus (TM), percentage elongation at break (EB), bending strength (BS), bending modulus (BM)) indicated that the 5 and 10% chicken feather fiber loading composites are the best percentages. The highest enhancements of TS, TM, BS, and BM are 64%, 64%, 103%, and 48% respectively for optimized composites. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) carried good evidence for mechanical bonding instead of chemical bonding between fiber and UPR. The composites showed the degradation of helix structure in thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) from the skeleton of chain linkage, and peptide bridges of fiber to decay keratin into CO2, H2S, and HCN.