2007 Volume 54 Issue 4 Pages 167-174
In order to improve the mechanical properties of recycle PE and PP blending material (hereafter, r-PE/PP), the method for adding several kinds of compatibilizers into r-PE/PP was investigated. The content of PE in the r-PE/PP was characterized by the FT-IR measurement using a master curve consisted of specific absorption ratios (APE/APP) with a series of PE content in PE/PP blends, resulting that PE/PP ratio was 49/51 (wt/wt%) in r-PE/PP.
The neat r-PE/PP showed brittle property, and the elongation at break was 67.5%. When adding some kinds of compatibilizers into the r-PE/PP, the property became ductile and the elongation at break was over 800%. In particular, the compatibilizers having chemical structure SEBE and EEBE enabled the r-PE/PP to improve the impact strength more than 6 times in comparison with that of the neat r-PE/PP. This result indicated that the compatibilizer should have chemical structure containing rubber-like segments. Furthermore, the variation of mechanical property of the r-PE/PP blended SEBE or EEBE with adding amount of them was investigated, and it can be found that for adding 0.5wt% EEBE the elongation at break was still over 1000% and the impact strength was also more than that of the neat r-PE/PP, suggesting that the chemical structure of EEBE was one of the most promising candidates for improving the mechanical properties of the r-PE/PP materials.
