Wet Pulverization of Waste Jute Fibers as Reinforcement for Biodegradable Nanocomposite Films

Vijay Baheti,Jiri Militky

doi:10.4172/2165-8064.1000130

Abstract

In the present study, waste jute fibers formed in textile industries, were wet pulverized to nanoscale using high energy planetary ball milling. The rate of refinement of uncleaned jute fibers having non-cellulosic contents was found slower than the cleaned jute fibers. This behavior is attributed to the strong holding of fiber bundles by noncellulosic contents which offered resistance to the defibrillation during wet milling. In addition, the pulverization of fibers in the presence of water prevents the increase in temperature of mill which subsequently avoided sticking of material on the milling container. After three hours milling, the diameter of nanofibers was observed around 50 nm. In the further stage, obtained nanofibers were incorporated under 1 wt%, 5 wt% and 10 wt% loading into poly lactic acid composite films. The potentials of jute nanofibers were investigated for improvement in mechanical and barrier properties of films. The maximum improvement in mechanical properties was observed in case of 5 wt% composite film where Young’s modulus was increased to 3.3 GPa from 1.0 GPa as compared with neat PLA film.

Highlights

The demand for textiles has increased significantly in the last decade due to rise in living standards of people
In case of wet milling, the increase in temperature was slowed down by deionised water which resulted in narrow particle size distribution with average particle size to ~640 nm after one hour of wet milling as shown in Figure 1b and Figure 2b
When jute nanofibers were incorporated into Polylactic acid (PLA) matrix for preparation of biodegradable nanocomposite films, the maximum improvements in mechanical properties were observed at 5 wt% loading of nanofibers

Summary

Introduction

The demand for textiles has increased significantly in the last decade due to rise in living standards of people. In the subsequent stage, cleaned waste jute fibers were subjected to wet pulverization in high energy planetary ball milling process to separate jute nanofibers. The present paper deals with wet pulverization of waste jute fibers to nanoscale using high energy planetary ball milling process.

Results

Conclusion