Paper Title
Effect of Flexural and Thermal Properties of Sustainable Kenaf Fibre and Rice Husk With Mineral Filled Pp Hybrid Composite
Abstract
Hybrid composite is of value added composite for industrial demand, hybrid composite has optimised and balance properties to encounter some disadvantages exhibited by individual fillers. Sustainable fillers are much needed by industry, which are from waste agriculture or plant origin. They can be sourced fillers incorporated with mineral fillers to form thermoplastic hybrid composite. PP composite utilizing individual fillers such as CaCO3, kenaf or rice husk have been investigated. Hybrid composite properties such as flexural and thermal properties are analysed in this study. Hybrid composite fabrication using both sustainable plant origin kenaf fiber and agricultural waste, rice husk particulate incorporated with calcium carbonate (CaCO3) into polypropylene (PP) was extruded by utilizing twin screw compounder. Using fixed ratios of PP and CaCO3, hybrid composite with various compositions of kenaf fiber and rice husk particulate were compounded with kenaf fibres in ranges between 5% up to 35% and rice husk 5% up to 30% by weight. In this study, the incorporation of kenaf/rice husk/CaCO3/PP hybrid composite on mechanical and thermal properties were investigated. The thermal stability of the component was examined by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The DSC results showed some changes in melting temperature (Tm), crystallization temperature (Tc) and the degree of crystallinity (XC) with the incorporation of hybrid fillers. Thermal gravimetric analysis ( TGA ) indicated thermal stability of hybrid composite filled with both kenaf fiber and rice husk particulate.
Keywords� Kenaf Fibre, Rice Husk, Hybrid Composite, Flexural properties, Thermal properties.