Composites From Wood Flour And Recycled Polystyrene

The paper focuses on the processing technique of wood flour-recycle polystyrene composite, and assesses the effects of wood flour contents, coupling agent contents and the rotate speeds of extruder on water uptake, tension strength, bending strength and dynamic mechanical properties. The results can be shown as follows:With the increasing of wood flour, composites gain higher water uptake but lower dynamic mechanical properties, the storage moduli (E' ) and glass transition temperature(Tg) decrease. The tension and bending strength of composites with wood flour content of 10%, 30% and 50% respectively is all less than RPS. Then tension and bending strength reach to maximum when the wood flour content is 40%. The addition of coupling agent (maleic-anhydried-modified polystyrene, MAPS ) can improve these properties described above. With 20% coupling agent, composites with 40% and 50% wood-flour content gain better storage moduli (E' ) than these without coupling agent, and composites with 40% and 50% wood powder content attain the increments in tension and bending strength of 10% and 40% respectively, The rotate speeds of extruder affect the mixing of wood powder, coupling agent and polystyrene. In our study, the composites can achieve good properties when processed with twin-screw rotate speed of 40 rpm. The best properties of composites can be gotten from 40%wood flour, 20% coupling agent and twin-screw rotate speed of 40 rpm.