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Cellulose reinforced thermoplastic composites using ring opening polymers for structural applications. NSF #1161292 With an increasing demand from materials and energy industrial sectors for sustainable “green” alternatives of the current resources, there has been a myriad of research activities aiming at developing renewable eco-friendly materials and technologies. One of the most important areas that have been attracting much attention both in industry and academia is the development of sustainable materials with an emphasis on utilizing renewable feedstock. A long lasting goal for new sustainable materials has been to develop high-performance, polymer composites reinforced by natural fibers. If successful, these materials are highly competitive candidates for replacement of glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRPs) with much greater utilization of renewable materials resources which are more sustainable. Natural fibers are typically more ductile, less abrasive to processing equipment therefore more cost effective in terms of production line, have significantly lower density that can used to make engineering components that are surprisingly lighter, are recyclable after their service life for energy recovery and are by far more cost effective in terms of raw material cost. There are important potential applications for high performance natural fiber reinforced composites such as automotive components, construction materials, and transportation materials. This collaborative research with wood science and engineering department of Oregon State University, research aims at utilizing the cellulosic fibers both in micro and nano-scale dimensions in order to reinforce high performance engineering thermoplastic materials using a liquid polymerization-molding approach. For this purpose, reactive cyclic precursors of engineering thermoplastics will be used as the starting material, which is followed by incorporation of cellulose nano-whiskers, or in the case of macro-composites, a liquid impregnation process will be utilized to wet out the fibers. This reactive mixture is then polymerized to high molecular weight polymers. This process helps avoiding the high temperature extrusion-molding type processing applications that results in thermal degradation of fibers as well as improved dispersion/impregnation due to low viscosity of the reactive resin. Molecular structural development, thermal, rheological, viscoelastic and mechanical properties of these novel (nano) composites will be studied in detail in an experimental-modeling approach.
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The University of Southern Mississippi
School of Polymers and High Performance Materials
Otaigbe Research Group
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