Global warming, environmental changes, and other problems have been increasing in the last decade. Researchers and scholars want to safeguard life on the earth by making ecofriendly products, like natural composite materials. Natural fibre is environmentally valuable because of its biodegradable nature. However, there is a serious problem caused by the incompatibility between fibre and matrix. In this work, sugar palm fibre was combined with thermoplastic polyurethane composites after treatment with different concentrations of sodium hydroxide from 2 to 6% to enhance the compatibility between them. An extrusion machine was used to combine 30% by weight of the sugar palm fibre and 70% by weight of thermoplastic polyurethane composites. The temperature, rotation velocity, and fibre size were fixed at (180-190-200°C), 40 rpm and 250 µm respectively. The composite was characterized according to ASTM D638. The sodium hydroxide treatment of the fibre could provide a good tensile modulus of 440 MPa at 2% of NaOH, and strain of 41.6% at 6% NaOH of the composite. However, the tensile strength was decreased, where the highest amount of 5.49 MPa recorded at 6% NaOH. Meanwhile, the tensile modulus and strain of the composites are found to be much better than those of untreated ones. In contrast, the tensile strength was still not improved.

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The physicochemical properties of an innovative and environmentally friendly composite material based on sugar palm fiber (SPF) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) were examined. The base material with short fibers was extruded and hot pressed to produce the TPU-SPF composites with different synthetic parameters. Operating parameters including temperature for extrusion (170 to 190 °C), rotational velocity (30 to 50 rpm), and fiber particle sizes (160, 250, and 425 µm) were investigated. The aims were to optimize rotational velocity, temperature, and fiber size of the TPU-SPF composites. Firstly, the influence of rotation of velocity and temperature on the tensile properties was investigated. Secondly, effects of different fiber sizes on tensile, flexural properties, and impact strength as per ASTM standards were tested. The morphological, thermal, and physicochemical properties of the synthesized TPU-SPF composites were ascertained with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The optimal results were observed with a temperature of 190°C and a rotational velocity of 40 rpm. Meanwhile, the strength and modulus for tensile and flexural were best for fiber size 250 µm. Moreover, the impact strength reached a peaking trend at 250 µm fiber size.

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