Residual composite materials with applications in the industry of the construction

Abstract

Ecological awareness as an ethical obligation is conceived. A product, a prototype or a process must culminate efficiently when incorporated into a production chain; its life cycle will depend, therefore; of its use, reuse and recycling. This project presents an industrial vision in conjunction with agriculture. For this, a general problem of interaction between products (agribusiness chain of the banana plant and reuse of conventional polymeric waste) that work within the same context has been addressed. Colombia has climatic conditions that weigh this country as one of the major producers in the banana zone. Today Colombia is recognized for its quality and for its exports, which reach a figure of 1,578,112 Tons of Banana as of December 31, 2017, and amount to 86.99 million boxes of approximately 18.14 Kg. Once the fruit is harvested, it is packed and exported; at the end of this process, the leaves and stems of the plant become waste. This residue called pseudostem has a mass percentage of about 51% with respect to the total plant. In economic terms, 1,667,000 metric tons per year correspond to this waste, an important economic factor in regions where bananas are high, as is the case in Risaralda. In response to this situation, we find that the banana pseudostem is a low-cost fiber, which increases its mechanical strength when mixed with medium density polymers. These characteristics allow mixing cellulosic residues with residual polymers such as polypropylene, the incorporation of load and reinforcement elements in thermoplastics has been a common practice in the plastics industry whose purpose is the reduction of production costs of molded products, and the improvement of thermo-mechanical properties of polymers. In this context, new materials are proposed based on the mixture of polypropylene and fiber with percentages of 10%, 20% and 30%. For these materials, the process variables were evaluated based on obtaining the pellets by extrusion and finally the samples to which the mechanical properties were estimated. On the other hand, the 3D design of the potential application in roof tiles for construction is reported and it is concluded that at 20 % fiber the degradation. There is a good consistency of pellets, but there is a drastic detriment of traction.