Physical and mechanical properties of Wood Plastic Composite (WPC) made from three different plastic waste codes and acacia wood flour

Over the past years, wood plastic composite (WPC) has been a favourite topic among the researchers. The main reason for the use of plastic wastes in producing WPC was because of the environmental concern and the availability of wood flour. In this study, three types of WPC were produced by using three different plastic waste codes combine with Acacia wood flour namely polypropylene-wood flour (PP-WF), high density polyethylene-wood flour (HDPE-WF) and low density polyethylene-wood flour (LDPE-WF) with different plastic content at 100%, 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% and 50%. Plastic waste particles and wood flour were mixed and melted together by using Hot­press machine. Later the mixture which were in mat-form were cut into small sheet before placed in a mould where the dimension of test piece followed American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D638-02 and D790-02 standard specifications. The effect of plastic contents on physical, mechanical and morphological properties of all type of WPC were investigated in this study. The moisture content of the WPC increased along with the increase of wood flour content from 10% to 50%. Among the three different types of plastic waste codes, PP with 100% plastic content had the highest density (1.033 g/cm3) followed by 100% plastic content of LDPE (0.87 g/cm3) and HDPE (0.863 g/cm3) at 100% plastic content. Water absorption and thickness swelling increased more than 50% and 4% respectively as the plastic content decreased at 50%. Results showed that as the plastic content decreased, the tensile strength, Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) and Modulus of Rupture (MOR) also decreased. Plastic waste codes of PP, HDPE and LDPE at 100% plastic content showed 25.02 N/mm2, 16.41 N/mm2 and 12.45 N/mm2 of tensile strength respectively and showed significant difference at ps 0.05. Similar findings for MOE and MOR, the trend result also decreased as the plastic content decreased. Range value of MOE for PP-WF composite was 1020.07 N/mm2 to 520.81 N/mm2, while HDPE-WF and LDPE-WF composite achieved 423.27 N/mm2 to 176.19 N/mm2 and 372.42 N/mm2 to 162.66 N/mm2 respectively. Based on the results obtained in this study, the mechanical and physical properties of WPCs influenced by the plastic contents. The mechanical properties of PP-WF composite were higher than HDPE­WF and LDPE-WF composites