Bagasse fiber-polymer composites: an experimental study
2006
Qinglin, W. | John, Z. Lu | Yong, L.
Sugarcane is an important agricultural crop in the southern United States. It is estimated that the US sugar industry mills over 35 million tons of green cane each year to produce sugar and related products. At the same time,the sugar industry generates over 4.5 million tons of dry fibrous materials (i.e. sugarcane bagasse) per year as its by-products. In this work, a melt blending process was used to manufacture bagasse/HDPE composites. The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of polymer melt flow index and fiber dimension and distribution on mechanical properties of the resultant composites. Fiber characteristics (i.e. the fiber type, morphology and dimension)and polymer melt flow index (MFI) had significant influences on mechanical properties of sugarcane fiber/HDPE composites. The length and width of sugarcane fibers followed a lognormal distribution before and after compounding. The long fibers had a significant reduction in the dimension and aspect ratio during compounding. The long fibers had a significant reduction in the dimension and aspect ratio during compounding during due to the shear stresses at the fiber and polymer interface. However, the short fibers had close values in these two properties before and after compounding. The HDPE resins with a low MFI value presented high tensile and impact strengths. Due to high sugar content, the pure rind fiber (PRF) had a poor performance as filler in the HDPE matrices with respects to the raw bagasse fiber (RBF) and alkali-extracted bagasse fiber (EBF). The fibers with a high aspects ratio and low sucrose content improved the strength properties of the resultant composites. However, the inferior mechanical performance of all sugarcane fibers at the interface indicated that the interfacial compatibility and adhesion between the fiber and thermoplastic matrix can be improved through chemical coupling.
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