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Processability and Properties of Re‐Graded, Photo‐Oxidized Post‐Consumer Greenhouse Films
Author(s) -
La Mantia Francesco Paolo,
Tzankova Dintcheva Nadka
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
macromolecular materials and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.913
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1439-2054
pISSN - 1438-7492
DOI - 10.1002/mame.200500180
Subject(s) - materials science , rheology , polymer , branching (polymer chemistry) , composite material , degradation (telecommunications) , computer science , telecommunications
Summary: The recycling of post‐consumer plastics leads, in general, to secondary materials having properties worse than those of the reclaimed material and certainly worse than those of the same virgin polymer. This is because of the degradation undergone by the objects during their use and because of the thermo‐mechanical degradation undergone during the reprocessing operations. The change of the molecular architecture is responsible for this worsening of properties. The use of stabilizing systems can slow the degradation during the melt processing but cannot give any improvement of the final properties of the material. In order to enhance the properties of the recycled plastics, some rebuilding of the molecular structure is necessary. The use of suitable additives can enlarge the molecular weight distribution or can create branching and cross‐linking during the melt processing of the photo‐oxidized PE. The processability in film blowing and the mechanical properties of these secondary materials are reported in this work. The rheological behavior, the filmability and most of the mechanical properties of the secondary PE with the rebuilt molecular structure are better than those of the post‐consumer material and similar to those of the virgin polymer.TS in the machine and in the transverse direction for all the samples extruded at 50 rpm.