| Conference | The 26th ASC technical conference (2nd joint US-Canada conference on composites), 26-28 September 2011, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Montréal, Québec, Canada |
|---|
| Abstract | Flax shive (FS), the woody part composing of over 70 wt% of the flax straw, is a waste product left after removing the fibers from flax straw. Although the FS is supposed to have lower strength than that of flax fiber, however, its low cost and greater availability could be advantages for the production of low cost composites. Recently, FS has been extracted using environmentally benign processes and thus hemicelluloses and lignin were effectively removed from FS. In this work, FS and extracted flax shive (EFS) were characterized and further used as reinforcing materials for polypropylene (PP) composite. The effect of cellulose content on the composite properties, such as thermal stability and mechanical properties was examined. Compatibilizer was added to get the best compatibility between the FS and the PP matrix. It was shown that EFS present better thermal stability than FS because of its lower flammable noncellulose ratio. FS appears to behave as filler for composite even with compatibilizer. However, with the presence of coupling agent E43, EFS could be upgraded to be a reinforcing material for PP composites. With 30 % EFS, the tensile strength and the modulus of composite can increase almost 8% and 100% over than PP, respectively. |
|---|
