Technological watch

Plastic waste recycling has been proposed as a long-term solution to eliminate land and marine deposit. This study proposed a new approach to fabricate biocomposites of nano-sized fillers and low matrix compositions with a great performance by using plastic packaging waste different from the conventional biocomposite. Coconut shell, an agricultural waste, wasbonded with waste plastic to form a biocomposite with a coupling agent. The optimum percentage composition and the effect of coconut shell ball milling time on the properties of the biocomposite were studied with density, thickness swelling, porosity flexural strength, flexural modulus, compressive strength, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results showed that the optimum performance of biocomposite was obtained at 30/70 (wt.%) plastic waste to coconut shell ratio, where 70 wt.% was the highest coconut shell composition that can be achieved. Furthermore, for 30 wt.% of polypropylene (low matrix), the performance of biocomposite improved significantly with milling time due to enhanced interaction between filler and matrix. As the milling time was increased from 0 to 40 h, the density increased from 0.9 to 1.02 g/cm3; thickness swelling decreased from 3.4 to 1.8%; porosity decreased from 7.0 to 3.0%; flexural strength increased from 8.19 to 12.26 MPa; flexural modulus increased from 1.67 to 2.87 GPa, and compressive strength increased from 16.00 to 27.20 MPa. The degradation temperature of biocomposite also increased as the milling duration increased from 0 to 40 h. The melting temperature increased significantly from 160 to 170 °C as the milling duration increased from 0 to 40 h. The depolymerisation occurred at 350 °C, which also increased with milling duration. This study revealed that the performance of biocomposite improved significantly with a lower percentage matrix and fillernanoparticle rather than increasing the percentage of the matrix. The nanocomposite can be used as a panelboard in industrial applications.