Improvement and Evaluation of Mechanical, Thermal and Rheological Properties of locally produced Polypropylene

Abstract

For many years, polypropylene (PP) has been very success-fully used for film blown, injection molded, and extrusion applica-tions. This work aimed to study the effect of linear low density pol-yethylene (LLDPE), talc and calcium carbonates on mechanical, thermal and rheological properties of local homopolymer polypro-pylene (PP) for injection molded application. In, five formulations of PP and LLDPE viz. 90/10, 80/20, 70/30, 60/40 and 50/50 in ratio of weight percentage were prepared for injection moulding ma-chine. PP/LLDPE (70/30) blend was selected and further investi-gated using different four fractions of talc and calcium carbonate. The resulted samples were subjected to mechanical properties tests such as flexural modulus, impact resistance and hardness. The thermal properties such as heat deflection temperature (HDT) were evaluated. The rheological properties such as melt flow index (MFI) and melt density were recorded, in addition, density test have been determined. The results showed improvement on the mechanical, thermal and rheological properties. It is then concluded that the optimum compounds of PP/LLDPE blends provided good mechanical, ther-mal properties and a moderate rheological properties was 70/30. However incorporated talc and calcium carbonate led to increase the hardness, MFI and melt density while then decreased the impact resistance of PP/LLDPE blend. It was realized that increase of talc and calcium carbonate content into PP/LLDPE blends increase the density. Taking this into consideration, thus the optimum com-pounds provided good balance of cost and performance (mechani-cal, rheological properties and density) of PP/LLDPE/Talc/CaCo3 was (42/18/20/20) in ratio of weight percentage respectively.