A study of the effect of chemical treatments on areca fiber reinforced polypropylene composite properties

Abstract Areca fibers have a great prospect in the polymer composite field since they possess superior properties like being light weight, strong and having high strength-to-weight ratio. In addition, areca fibers are biodegradable, non-toxic and eco-friendly and have low maintenance cost. In this research work, areca fibers were subjected to chemical treatments such as NaOH, KMnO ₄ , C ₆ H ₅ COCl and H ₂ C=CHCOOH to reduce the hydrophilic nature of areca fibers and to improve interfacial adhesion between areca fibers and thermoplastic polypropylene matrix, so that areca-polypropylene composites with improved properties can be obtained. The untreated and all chemically treated areca-polypropylene composites with 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70% fiber loadings were fabricated by the compression molding technique. Investigations of tensile, flexural and impact properties of areca fiber reinforced polypropylene composites were done under given fiber loadings by following American Standard for Testing Materials (ASTM) standard procedures. Amongst all untreated and chemically treated areca-polypropylene composites, acrylated areca-polypropylene composites with 60% fiber loading showed higher tensile and flexural strength values and with 50% fiber loading showed higher impact strength values. Hence, chemically treated areca-polypropylene composites can be considered as a very promising material for the fabrication of lightweight material industries.