Production of Bio-Composite Polymers With Rice and Coffee Husks as Reinforcing Fillers Using a Low-Cost Compression Molding Machine

Abstract

A compression molding machine was developed to produce bio-composite polymers using rice and coffee husks as reinforcing filler (5% weight) with high density polyethylene (95% weight) as the base polymer. Rice and coffee husks are typically disposed by open burning in fields. Their use as reinforcing fillers therefore reduces on the negative impacts of their disposal. The developed compression molding machine was constructed using mainly mild steel and stainless steel. It consisted of heating chamber, mold base, compression shaft and observation window. A temperature controller was incorporated to regulate the temperature in the heating chamber. Elongation, tensile strength and water absorption tests were carried out on the developed bio-composite polymers. Results indicated that inclusion of rice husks (5%) reduced the tensile strength and percentage elongation of the developed bio-composite polymer. Similar results were observed with coffee husk. Highest water absorption rates of 8% were observed for bio-composite polymers developed with Arabica coffee husks. American Society for Testing and Materials. 1998. ASTM. ASTM D570-98: standard test method for water absorption of plastics. American Society for Testing and Materials. 2003. ASTM. ASTM D638-03: standard test method for tensile properties of plastics.

Characterization of Rice Husks as Potential Reinforcement for Polymer Composites

“…For instance, rice husks have been used to reinforce PLA by Adeosun et al (2016), Wu and Tsou (2019), Hamdan et al (2019), andTran et al (2014) to enhance tensile and thermal properties of neat PLA. Tensile properties of HDPE were enhanced by Kassim Shaari et al (2020) and Musinguzi et al (2019) due to incorporation of rice husk fiber material. Abdul Azam et al (2020), Sun et al (2019), and Nishata et al (2017) used surface modification of rice husks to enhance properties of developed fiber-reinforced HDPE composites.…”

“…Rice husks, accounting for over 20% of paddy rice, are notable agricultural fibers with very little usage in developing countries, mainly because of limitations in methods of converting them into useful products (Menya et al 2018;Bledzki et al 2012). Due to this, majority of them are often burned in open fields, creating negative environmental impacts (Musinguzi et al 2019).…”

Optimization of tensile strength of PLA/clay/rice husk composites using Box-Behnken design

“…Rice husks are underutilized in Uganda and many other developing nations, due to limitations in methods necessary to convert them into useful products [11]. As such, majority of the rice husks generated by agricultural processing are often burned in open fields, a practice which creates negative environmental impacts [12][13][14].…”