| dc.description | Recycling polymers process includes techniques that present solutions to the problem
of plastic waste in the environment. This process is important to improve the economic
sector in many countries, like cooperative societies. Primary recycling is related to the
reuse of plastic waste directly from the production site in the industry, that carry on some
advantages besides the low cost involved in the reuse of this waste: the raw material is free
from dust of many kinds (metals, different powders and plastics). Among this polymeric
waste, packaging dominates this scenario, covering 62:2% of the total, where polyolefins
account more than 50% of the packaging production. In the same way, the recovering of
sulfur-cured rubber contribute to release the environment from this almost non-degradable
rubber. The goal of this work is to produce an alternative recycled product composed
by mixing twenty-times reused HDPE (by primary recycling process) with vulcanized
EPDM rubber. The twenty-times recycled thermoplastic was reached by extrusion, which
intention was to simulate a polyolefin like a scrap. The EPDM rubber was fragmented and
incorporated to the thermoplastic matrix in proportions of 1% and 5% w/w, from both kinds
of rubber, like received and after a thermal treatment. One of the thermal treatment of rubber
consisted in an oven ageing in the temperature of 100 C; the other was a simultaneous
heating under irradiation process by electron beam at 130 C and at 100 kGy absorbed
dose (at 22:4 kGy/s dose rate). The final mixture was obtained by injection molding and
specimens from injection process were
-irradiated at 50 kGy and at 100 kGy. Mechanical
analysis of stress-strain, infrared FTIR spectra and thermogravimetric degradation were
performed to evaluate the final product. The obtained product showed heterogeneous; the
rubber without thermal treatment was better incorporated to thermoplastic matrix and the
irradiated samples present mechanical resistance that suggests this new material intended
to be viable to industrial use. | |
