Mechanical, Physical and Biological Properties of Sandwich Biocomposites Panels manufactured from Food Packaging Waste

IRG/WP 17-40791

A S O Mohareb, A H Hassanin, K Candelier, M F Thévenon, A Kilic, Z Candan

Recently, recycling of Tetra Pak® packaging material has attracted many attention, particularly in composite industries. In this work, novel biocomposites sandwich structures were manufactured using TetraPak waste materials as core component and various kind of natural and artificial woven fabrics as skin elements. Mechanical, physical and biological performances of the developed composite panels were evaluated. The results showed that using a layer of woven fabric made of either Jute (J) or Glass (G), has a significant effect on MOR of TetraPak panels. MOR value of the stand-alone TetraPak panels (TP) [No-Skin] was 9.75 MPa while MOR values of J-TP-J and G-TP-G are 20.31 MPa and 22.67 MPa, respectively. Distinct observations have been remarked concerning the physical performance of the developed biocomposites. In general, significant improvements in water absorption and dimension stability were recorded with all TetraPak based specimens compared with the control particleboard specimens. After 12 weeks of fungal exposure, mass losses in TetraPak based composite specimens were considerably lower. However, TetraPak panels overlaid with fiberglass fabrics showed the highest decay resistance against test white and brown rot fungi. The results of termite screening tests showed that all reinforced TetraPak samples were gained significant enhancements against termite attack compared with the solid wood reference specimens. Therefore, the resulting composites seem to possess a great potential to replace wood based products in broad range of applications.


Keywords: Tetra Pak, biocomposites, mechanical properties, physical performance, biodegradation

Conference: 17-06-04/08 Ghent, Belgium


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