Preparation And Properties Of Mineral Fiber/ Poly (Butylene Succinate) Composites

The use of synthetic nondegradable polymers has led to serious environmental pollution, and one solution is to use biodegradable polymers. Poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) is one of the biodegradable aliphatic thermoplastic polyesters,which has several interesting properties such as biodegradability, melt processability, and chemical resistance and have wide applications. Because the shortcomings from its strength, brittleness, heat resistance limit the scope of its applications, modifying PBS has become one of critical researches. In this paper, we gave an overview of the latest research progress of PBS. With the focus on the modification of PBS, we used basalt fiber (BF), attapulgite clay (ATP), fibrous brucite (FB) to reinforce PBS and investigated the effect of three reinforcements on the properties of PBS.Basalt fiber reinforced poly(butylene succinate) composites have been fabricated with different fiber contents by using melt compound method and their mechanical properties, as well as thermal properties have been investigated. The tensile, flexural and impact properties of the PBS matrix resin are improved markedly by increasing the fiber contents in the composites. DMA results show that the storage modulus of the composite can be enhanced markedly by increasing the fiber contents in the composites, but the glass transition temperature (Tg) isn't changed significantly. With the addition of 29 wt% BF, the thermal deflection temperature (HDT), thermal decomposition temperature (Td) and crystallization temperature (Tc) increased by 30℃, 15.2℃and 7.3℃, respectively, compared to the pristine PBS sample.Attapulgite (ATP) clay was purified by HCl first and then modified with silane coupling agent. Attapulgite/poly (butylene succinate) nanocomposites were prepared by melt blending in a twin-screw extruder. SEM images depict that surface modification of ATP improve the dispersion of the ATP clay in the polymer matrix. The mechanical properties and thermal stability of ATP/PBS and OATP/PBS nanocomposites were both improved in the presence of attapulgite clay. In addition, the incorporation of OATP also gave rise to an increase of the storage modulus and the changes of the glass transition temperature for PBS nanocomposites. DSC results show that ATP clay acted as nucleating agents for the crystallization of PBS.Fibrous brucite was dispersed by lauryl sodium sulfate and then modified with silane coupling agent. Fibrous brucite/PBS composites were prepared by melt blending in a twin-screw extruder. SEM images depict that the treated brucite fibers can be well dispersed in drying regime and the polymer matrix. The mechanical properties were improved with the incorporation of the fibrous brucite. The thermal decomposition temperature of the composites decreased with increasing the content of the fibrous brucite. The oxygen index of the composites was increased significantly, indicating the flame retardancy of the composite was improved with the addition of fibrous brucite.