Influence of compatibilizer on performance of pristine and recycled PP/PE blends

V. PETTARIN; A. COSTANTINO; G. PALLAZZO; C. ROSALES; C. BERNAL

Guimarães

Conferencia; PMI2018 International Conference on Polymers and Mould Innovations; 2018

One of the big challenges of recycling engineering of thermoplastics is to manufacture competitive pieces or products in terms of mechanical properties such as toughness or strength. Improved mechanical performance of recycled materials would widen their application field. One of the strategies to improve PE/PP blends per-formance is to add special compatibilizers. The aim of the present work is to obtain recycled PE/PP blends from industrial wastes whith similar properties to those of virgin PE/PP blends. Four different pristine blends were prepared: without compatibilizer and with 11wt.% of three different copolymer based compatibilizers. Also, three recycled blends were studied: without and with two different masterbatch compatibilizers. Blends were prepared in a single screw extruder simulating industrial processing conditions and then processed via compression molding into plaques. Microstructure and morphology of blends were analyzed by DSC and SEM. Tensile and fracture tests were carried out on mode I double edge-notched tensile specimens (DENT) at quasi-static conditions (2 mm/min). Fracture surfaces were studied by SEM. It was found that the addition of compatibilizing masterbatchs improves the performance of both pristine and recycled PP/PE blends.