Affiliations 

  • 1 School of Industrial Technology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam 40450, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Higher Education Centre of Excellence (HICoE), Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Products (INTROP), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), UPM Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 3 Radiation Processing Technology Division, Malaysian Nuclear Agency, Bangi 43000, Selangor, Malaysia
Polymers (Basel), 2020 Nov 06;12(11).
PMID: 33171889 DOI: 10.3390/polym12112604

Abstract

New environmentally friendly plasticized poly(lactic acid) (PLA) kenaf biocomposites were obtained through a melt blending process from a combination of epoxidized jatropha oil, a type of nonedible vegetable oil material, and renewable plasticizer. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the incorporation of epoxidized jatropha oil (EJO) as a plasticizer and alkaline treatment of kenaf fiber on the thermal properties of PLA/Kenaf/EJO biocomposites. Kenaf fiber was treated with 6% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution for 4 h. The thermal properties of the biocomposites were analyzed using a differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). It must be highlighted that the addition of EJO resulted in a decrease of glass transition temperature which aided PLA chain mobility in the blend as predicted. TGA demonstrated that the presence of treated kenaf fiber together with EJO in the blends reduced the rate of decomposition of PLA and enhanced the thermal stability of the blend. The treatment showed a rougher surface fiber in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs and had a greater mechanical locking with matrix, and this was further supported with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. Overall, the increasing content of EJO as a plasticizer has improved the thermal properties of PLA/Kenaf/EJO biocomposites.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.