Preparation and Characterization of Wood Plastic Composite Made Up of Durian Husk Fiber and Recycled Polystyrene Foam.

¹ School of Engineering, Faculty of Built Environment, Engineering, Technology and Design, Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus, 47500 Subang Jaya, Malaysia
² Centre for Engineering Programmes, HELP College of Arts and Technology, 55200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
³ Faculty of Engineering, The University of Nottingham, 43500 Semenyih, Malaysia.
⁴ School of Engineering and Physical Science, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, 62200 Putrajaya, Malaysia.

Abstract

Polystyrene foam is one of the major plastic waste that hardly to recycle. The present research is aims to recycle polystyrene foam as raw material to produce wood plastic composites (WPC). The WPC was produced from recycled polystyrene (rPS) and durian husk fiber (DHF) using melt compound and compression moulding processes. This paper is focus on effect of fiber content on tensile and thermal properties of rPS/DHF composite. The results found the tensile strength modulus of this WPC increased at higher fiber content, but elongation at break was reduced. However, this composites exhibited an early thermal degradation when subjected to high temperature and this was commonly found among WPC. The thermal degradation of rPS/DHF composites yielded high percentage of char residue due to char formation of DHF. Overall, the rPS/DHF composites with 60 phr fiber content able to achieved strength slight above 16 MPa without any chemical treatment additives. This indicates the rPS/DHF composites can be a potential WPC if further modify with to improve its strength.