Fabrication of Transparent Composites from Pinaceae Wood Packaging Residues

Abstract

In the 21st century, mankind has witnessed the rapidly development of all industries with a lot of new products in a variety of types and designs. However, this development has been also causing many problems with the society and the ecological environment such as a wasteful excess of products, exhaustive exploitation of natural resources, indiscriminate deforestation, and waste pollution affecting the living environment, ecosystem, and human health. Many organizations and governments are calling for environmental protection, limit waste emissions, and find good solutions to use the recycled materials as raw materials in production plants. This study would like to provide a solution which not only utilizes waste packaging Pinaceae wood for recycling as raw material but also supplies to the market with a green product responding to the durability requirements in fact. Pinaceae wood packaging residues were chemically processed through two stages. The amount of lignin extract from Pinaceae was determined by the method of Tappi 222 om-02 which was significantly influenced by the extraction parameters such as temperature, time and concentration of the treatment solution. Morphological modification of wood materials was analyzed by SEM micrographs. In particular, the mechanical properties of the Epoxy/TPW2 composite green material have been significantly improved with increasing up to 206–540 % compared to the original Pinaceae wood. The optical properties of the wood have completely changed from opaque pine wood with the optical transmittance of 8 % into transparent composite material with the optical transmittance up to 85 % using UV-vis spectroscopy analysis.

Treatment of Water Hyacinth Fibers to Improve Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of Green Composite Materials

“…The extracted solution changed into darker brown and the bonds among water hyacinth fibers became weak and easily destroyed. This is consistent with the case study of [11]. Therefore, the temperature of 40 o C was chosen for the treatment of the water hyacinth fibers.…”

“…This leads to good bonding among cellulose fibers or among cellulosehemicellulose. The important advantages of the natural fibers are low density, less abrasion, lower cost, recyclable and biodegradable which responded the requirements of environmentally friendly composites [10][11].…”

Can Plasma Surface Treatment Replace Traditional Wood Modification Methods?

“…Durability, flame retardancy, electrical conductivity, improved adhesion, water repellence, and self-cleaning are just a few of the properties that different industries require from wood products. Properties can be tailored with different chemical methods but they are not environmentally friendly and sometimes impair the properties of the bulk wood [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”