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Investigation of catalyzed thermal recycling for glass fiber‐reinforced epoxy using fluidized bed process
Author(s) -
Pender Kyle,
Yang Liu
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
polymer composites
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.577
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1548-0569
pISSN - 0272-8397
DOI - 10.1002/pc.25213
Subject(s) - epoxy , materials science , composite material , thermal stability , glass fiber , curing (chemistry) , fluidized bed , thermal decomposition , catalysis , thermal , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , chemistry , engineering , physics , meteorology
An investigation of the effect of metal catalysts on thermal recycling of glass fiber‐reinforced epoxy was carried out within a fluidized bed system. CuO nanopowder was integrated with epoxy to assess its ability in reducing the epoxy thermal stability and in turn reducing the typical temperatures required thermal recycling for epoxy composites. It was found that the CuO was able to significantly accelerate the thermal degradation of the selected epoxy. The CuO loading of 5 wt% of epoxy provided the largest reduction in thermal stability and activation energy of the second stage of decomposition. It was also demonstrated that the addition of CuO did not negatively affect epoxy mechanical properties or curing and in fact increased the epoxy glass transition temperature. When applied to glass fiber‐epoxy (GF‐epoxy) recycling within the fluidized bed process, glass fibers were recycled at just 400°C with a yield of up to 59%. POLYM. COMPOS., 40:3510–3519, 2019. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers