Mechanical Upcycling Immiscible Polyethylene Terephthalate-Polypropylene Blends with Carbon Fiber Reinforcement.

ABSTRACT: Ineffective sorting of post-consumer plastics remains one of the major obstacles in the recycling of plastics. Consequently, these highly heterogeneous, mixed post-consumer plastics will end up in landfill or have to be incinerated as repurposing them directly would lead to a polymer blend with inferior quality for many end-uses. In this work, we demonstrate the use of carbon fibers (CFs) to practically upgrade the mechanical properties of mixed plastics, adding value to them. This will create a stronger demand for mixed plastics to be used in various engineering applications. Using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP) as the model immiscible polymer blend, we showed that the incorporation of CFs increased the tensile, flexural, and single-edge notched fracture toughness

SUBMITTER: Gaduan AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9112279 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature