Study on Thickness Swelling of Wood Plastic Composites Made From Beech Wood Flour-Polypropylene

Subject Areas : Water and Environment

Shokooh Etedali ¹ , Behbood Mohebby ² , Mehdi Tajvidi ³

1 - - MSc graduated student in Wood Sciences and Technology, Tarbiat Modares University
2 - Associate. Prof. in Wood Biology and Technology, Tarbiat Modares University
3 - Associate. Prof. in Wood Sciences and Technology, Tehran University

Received: 2011-05-18 Accepted : 2012-02-07 Published : 2012-03-20

Keywords: waste, Wood Plastic Composite, Thickness Swelling,

Abstract :

Due to high demands for wood products as lumbers, panels as well as wood products and also regarding deficit of wood sources in the country, attentions are changing to substitute wood products with wood plastic composites made from wood wastes. Therefore, it provides opportunities to solve environmental aspects of the waste materials as well as use very low cost sources for production. This research work has been concerned to study swelling of wood plastic composites made from different ratios of wood waste manufactured by two techniques of extrusion and hot press modeling. The samples were made based on target density of 1 g/cm3 and dimensions as 35×35×1cm from beech wood flours as wastes and polypropylene with mixing ratios of 40, 50 and 60%. The samples were made with two techniques of extrusion modeling and hot press modeling. Results revealed that any increase of wood particles ratio from 40 to 60% increased the thickness swelling of the wood plastic samples. It was also shown that composites with higher ratios of the wood flours achieved to their maxima of the saturation within a shorter period. Boards molded samples with hot press had lower swelling than that of the extruded molding.

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