Speaker
Description
The use of polymer composites, which are widely recognised for their ability to create sustainable materials from waste materials like rice husk, has grown. 150 million tons of rice husk, an agricultural waste, are produced during the milling of rice. It leads to environmental problems if rice husk is not disposed of properly. This problem is
similar with plastic waste dumped globally achieve 19-25 million ton every year. This project focuses on utilization of rice husk fibre (RHF) blended with recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) for RHF/RPET polymer composite. The main objective is to determine the physical and mechanical properties in different ratios of rice husk fiber (RHF) blended with recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) to produce RHF/RPET polymer composite. The fabrication process includes grinding of RHF at particles size of 90 µm, mixing using brabender machine at temperature of 180°C for 15 minutes and crushing process into small particles size of 10 mm. The preparation was involving 10 samples of RHF/RPET polymer composite at different ratio RHF of 2-20 (wt/wt%) blended with RPET using injection molding machine at temperature of 180°C, screw pressure at 45 psi and the velocity is 55-65%. The results show 16 wt/wt% of RHF/RPET polymer composite gives higher tensile strength and, impact strength and energy absorbed at 163.42 kN, 36.72 kJ/m and 3.04 respectively. It is supported by physical properties of density at 1.64g/𝑐𝑚3, porosity at 3.19, and gives good bonding structure between RHF and RPET elements. In conclusion, the optimum ratio of 16 wt/wt% has the potential to be implemented in deck panel application.
