Influence of Giant Reed Fibers on Mechanical, Thermal, and Disintegration Behavior of Rotomolded PLA and PE Composites

Abstract

This paper assesses the modifications in the properties of rotomolded polyethylene (PE) and polylactic acid (PLA) composites obtained with 5 and 10% giant reed fibers, mainly focusing on the alterations due to a bio-disintegration process. Thermal properties (melting temperature and crystallinity degree), morphology (via optical and scanning electron microscopy), and chemical changes (by Fourier Transformed Infrared spectroscopy) were studied. Composites with untreated and NaOH-treated fibers were obtained, finding that this treatment does not improve the mechanical performance of composites due to increased porosity. The introduction of natural fibers into a PE matrix does not significantly modify the thermal and bio-disintegration properties of the rotomolded material. Regarding mechanical properties, PE-composites show increased tensile modulus and reduced impact and tensile strength than the matrix. On the other hand, PLA composites show lower impact and flexural strength than neat PLA, remaining the rest of the mechanical properties unchanged regardless of the fibers' addition. The incorporation of Arundo fibers modifies to a great extent the thermal and degradation behavior of the PLA matrix.

Use of giant reed (Arundo donax L.) for polymer composites obtaining: a mapping review

“…Finally, Suárez et al have developed a lab-scale procedure based on a series of rolling mills to open the reed culms and separate the fibrous material from the softer one (Suárez et al 2021(Suárez et al , 2022bOrtega et al 2021). Finer fibers with higher cellulose content (about 67%) and good "mechanical properties" (Suárez et al 2022a) can be obtained by combining chemical soaking in a NaOH solution and mechanical processing.…”

“…The studies about obtaining composites with giant reed are limited and mainly focus on particleboard production (García-Ortuño et al 2011;Ferrández-García et al 2012;Andreu-Rodríguez et al 2013;Barreca et al 2019;Ferrández-García et al 2019;Ferrández Villena et al 2020b;Ferrández-García et al 2020). Those studies on composites production use shredded vegetal material (Fiore et al 2014c, a;Bessa et al 2020Bessa et al , 2021b, bast fibers obtained by combing with a teeth brush (Fiore et al 2014b;Scalici et al 2016), or rudimentary mechanical procedures (Suárez et al 2021(Suárez et al , 2022bOrtega et al 2021), as summarized in Table 2. This section shows the conditions and properties found in the literature for composites with Arundo-derived materials for particleboard production, thermoset, and thermoplastic composites.…”

“…Longer fibers (3-4 mm length) at 5 and 10% loadings provided no significant differences in rotomolded PE parts (except for impact strength). In contrast, impact and flexural properties are reduced for PLAbased composites (Suárez et al 2022b). These authors have treated the fibers with a NaOH solution 1 N (40 g/l), getting fibers with increased thermal stability without any change in the "mechanical properties" of the composites.…”

Evaluation of the use of vineyard pruning biomass (bobal variety) in constructive bioproducts

“…There are numerous studies on the properties of plant residues: coconut shell (Alavez-Ramírez et al 2012;Kumar and Saha 2022), paper manufacturing waste with corn peel (Lertsutthiwong et al 2008), kenaf fibers (Naik and Kumar 2021;Prabhu et al 2022), cotton stem fibers (Zhou et al 2010;Zhou et al 2020), coconut shell and bagasse (Panyakaew and Fotios 2011), hemp fibers (Chikhi et al 2013;Jiant et al 2019), flax (Jiant et al 2019Ramesh 2019), giant reed (Ferrández-García et al 2012Suárez et al 2022), canary palm (Ferrández-García et al 2017), andWashingtonia palm (Ferrández-García et al 2017).…”