Comparative study of polypropylene composites reinforced with oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber and oil palm derived cellulose

Abstract

In recent years, the race for producing biodegradable products has increase tremendously. Different approaches have been attempted to use biomass as natural biopolymer for production of biodegradable plastics. In this work, cellulose was derived from oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber (EFBF) by standard ASTM D1104 method. The cellulose and EFB fibers were blended in different ratios up to 50-wt.% with polypropylene (PP) using Brabender twin-screw compounder. Effects of cellulose and EFB fibers on the mechanical properties of PP were investigated. Studies on the morphological properties and the influence of fiber loading on the properties of PP-cellulose and PP-EFBF composites were also conducted. The PP-cellulose composite gave better results in comparison with PP-EFBF composite. The changes in mechanical and morphological properties with different cellulose and fiber loading were discussed.

Properties of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch-Filled Recycled Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene Composites: Effect of Shapes and Filler Loadings with Random Orientation

“…These findings suggest that OPEFB with nano size proved to improve a mechanical property in terms of the impact strength of the biocomposites compared with those with long fibers. These results are in agreement with those obtained by Khalid et al (2008). The impact strength of the biocomposites is strongly influenced by the nature of the fiber, polymer, fiber-matrix interfacial bonding, and testing conditions (Joseph et al 2003).…”

The Effects of Weight Fraction on Mechanical Behaviour of Thermoset Palm EFB Composite

“…The results obtained in the current paper showed similarity in trend compared to those available in the open literature [1], [2], [4]. Experimental measurement on the composites depict a rather wide range of error bars compared to pure epoxy, these deviations arise due to the nature of the palm fibres where the milling process could not effectively separate the EFB fibres into individual strand and a large proportion are still attached together in a bunch.…”

“…The overall increasing trend could be attributed to the higher stiffness of the composite due to improved fibre reinforcement with higher interfacial bonding between matrix and fibres. Similar results were obtained by Khalid et al on EFB palm fibre/polypropylene (PP) composite, where the authors observed an increase of filler content caused a steady increase in flexural modulus [2].…”

“…Instead, these fibres tend to introduce imperfection in surface bonding and disturb effective stress transfer. Prasad et al [4] reported that lower fibre loading performed more as impurities than reinforcement while Khalid et al found that incorporation of filler into polymer matrix induced interruption in transferring of stress in the direction of the applied force [2]. Enhancement in UTS was observed with increases in M f , where a peak could be seen in composite loaded with 27.3% M f .…”

Effects of polypropylene methyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes and polypropylene-grafted maleic anhydride compatibilizers on the properties of palm kernel shell reinforced polypropylene biocomposites

“…This gives poor interfacial interaction between PP and PKS thus, lead to the poor strength of the composite. Poor dispersion of PKS inside PP matrix also contributed to the strength deterioration of the composites [15] . Nevertheless, PKS reinforced PP biocomposites appeared to have higher tensile strength with the addition of PP-g-MAH and PP-POSS.…”