Fabrication of agave tequilana bagasse/PLA composite and preliminary mechanical properties assessment
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 24
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1016/j.indcrop.2020.112523
- Title of journal
- Industrial Crops and Products
- Article number
- 112523
- First page
- -
- Volume
- 152
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 0926-6690
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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4
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Environmental and economic concerns arising from the large-scale production and consumption of oil-based materials have led to increased attention towards the development of new and more sustainable materials. This growing interest has led to the development of new “green composites”. Green composites are materials made from naturally occurring renewable resources and are considered a more efficient, sustainable, and biocompatible solution to oil-based materials. This research is a contribution to the broader framework of the circular economy and to natural fibre-based material development. This work presents the development and preliminary assessment of a new green composite based on Bagasse Agave tequilana fibres (ATF), and polylactic acid (PLA).Initially, this work presents the raw material characterisation (i.e. ATF) as well as the assessment of fibre pre-treatments (i.e. alkali and enzymatic) to improve the materials compatibility(i.e. ATF and PLA). The work continues with the fabrication of several grades of the aforementioned green composites by extrusion/press moulding using several loading rations (i.e.20, 40 and 60%). Finally, material’s tensile, flexural, impact and water absorption properties are evaluated and compared with other PLA-based green composites. The assessment of the mechanical properties showed tensile strength of up to 57.1 MPa for 20 % (w/v) of ATF untreated samples. Flexural strength up to 98.8 MPa and impact strength of 6.8 kJ/m2 for 40% (w/v) of ATF alkali treated samples. These results compared well with those of other new bio-composites and show how current bagasse waste has been successfully used to produce usable agave fibre/PLA composites by extrusion/press moulding. These lightweight, low-cost composites might find applications such as non-structural automotive components and consumer goods; leading to energy efficient transportation and reduced fuel consumption. In this work Dr Huerta contributed with the development of the theoretical framework as well as with the material development, mechanical testing and analysis of results.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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