Sustainable pineapple fiber-based PLA-PBAT biocomposites: Development, characterization, and analysis
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The current experimental investigation presents a comparative evaluation of selected biodegradable polymer blends and their composites, focusing on their material properties.Two biopolymers, polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT), along with pineapple fibers (F), as bio-reinforcement were taken for the analysis, which was conducted in two stages: During first stage, PBAT was melt-blended with PLA in varying weight fractions (10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 wt%) to produce PLA/PBAT blend (B) and in second stage, PLA, PBAT, B 80/20 blend were reinforced with pineapple fiber (10, 20, and 30 wt%).The samples were fabricated using extrusion-injection molding.The samples were characterized for density, thermal degradation, crystallinity, and mechanical behaviour.Among the blends, the optimal B 80/20 combination exhibited tensile strength, flexural strength, and elongation at break of 47.9±2.4,88.2±5.4MPa, and 330.6±10.47%,respectively.Results indicate that the PLA-based composites (PF) exhibit significantly better density, tensile strength, and flexural strength as compared to neat polymers, blends, blend-based composites (BF), and PBAT-based composites (TF).Among the PF composites, the PF 70/30 composite demonstrated superior performance, with maximum tensile and flexural strength values of 73.9±1.3 and 107.1±4.3MPa, respectively.
Source: eXPRESS Polymer Letters
Authors: Yashpal Singh, Raj Kumar, Nikhil Chauhan, Tejas Pramod Naik, Inderdeep Singh
Language: English
Subfield: Polymers and Plastics
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4416985684