Biopolymers, such as poly(lactic) acid (PLA), which is obtained through green synthesis pathways from renewable resources, has attracted considerable interest in recent years because of the increasing need to reduce petroleum‐based plastic pollution and bringing their prices comparable with conventional thermoplastic commodities’ price (e.g., polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene). The present work investigates the employment of 10% wt of natural materials, deriving from wheat milling process, as biofiller of PLA to develop a biocomposite filament suitable for 3D‐printing technique. The inclusion of a cost‐free natural material leads to a strong reduction of the whole material cost. Implementing this new class of composite material to additive manufacturing technique allows to dramatically reduce the environmental impact of 3D printed products.
The present work reports the use of recycled carbon fibers (rCF), obtained from pyro-gasification treatment of carbon fibers reinforced polymers (CFRP), to produce a thermoplastic composite filament for additive manufacturing, in particular fused deposition modeling (FDM) process. Polylactic acid (PLA), a thermoplastic biobased and biodegradable polymer, is used as matrix for the composite filament, as it is the most common plastic used in FDM due to its good mechanical properties, stiffness, and strength. Upon production process optimization, filaments with rCF loadings of 5 and 10% wt are produced and analyzed. A particular attention is devoted to the evaluation of the production process on the carbon fibers (CFs) length and the study of the thermal and mechanical properties of the obtained composite materials.
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