Regeneration of thermally recycled glass fibre for cost effective composite recycling : the effect of fibre regeneration and matrix modification

The recycling of glass fibre composites has become an important issue because of social-ecological, financial and legislative reasons. One main obstacle for the recycling of glass fibre composites is the low value of the recycled fibres. The present study investigates methods to maximize the reinforcement potential of thermally recycled glass fibres. Glass fibres were exposed to thermal recycling temperatures and processed into injection moulded polypropylene composites. Microbond tests were performed to characterize the adhesion between the fibres and the polypropylene matrix. Similar to other studies, the composite performance dropped when the fibres were exposed to high temperatures. It was found that the regeneration of the interfacial shear strength using maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene improves the composites performance but a post treatment of the fibres with γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane was more effective. It was concluded that the application of γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane might have improved the strength of the fibres