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Use of recycled pulped chromated copper arsenate-treated wood fibre in polymer composites

Abstract
The goal of this study was to investigate if it is possible to recycle chromated copper arsenate (CCA)-treated wood for use in wood polymer composites. This was done by soda pulping wood chips of CCA-treated lumber in a laboratory-scale digester. Composites of 10–30 weight percentage of filler in polypropylene were produced with and without the addition of maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) as a coupling agent. These composites were produced using extrusion compounding and injection moulding. The mechanical properties were determined using tensile testing; the properties examined in this study are the ultimate tensile strength, Young’s modulus and strain at break. The effect of the CCA-treated filler on the dimensional stability was investigated by comparing the moisture absorption with virgin wood-filled composites. It was found that ultimate tensile strength improves with increasing filler percentage for the compositions with MAPP. The Young’s modulus increases with increasing filler percentage for all compositions, and failure strain decreases with increasing filler percentage for all compositions. Moisture absorption studies show that the moisture absorption decreases when MAPP is added to the composite, and a slight decrease in moisture uptake is observed for the CCA-treated wood composites with respect to the virgin wood composites.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Peerbooms, W., & Pickering, K. L. (2018). Use of recycled pulped chromated copper arsenate-treated wood fibre in polymer composites. Journal of Composites Science, 2(2), 35. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcs2020035
Date
2018
Publisher
MDPI
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).