Waste paper as a cheap source of natural fibre to reinforce polyester resin in production of bio-composites

Abstract

Abstract A low cost composite material was prepared by using waste newspaper and polyester resin. The waste newspaper used in the study was characterized by chemical and X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods, and tensile strength was measured. Waste newspaper contains holocellulose of about 83.2% and the crystallinity index of the newspaper is 64.2. Composite samples were fabricated with three different fibre contents, namely 25%, 33%, and 48% (by weight). It was observed that on increasing the fibre content from 25% to 48%, the tensile strength and the modulus also increased by 54%–40%, respectively, along the fibre direction. It was observed that with 48% (w/w) fibre content, the waste paper composite yielded 70 MPa tensile strength and 6 GPa modulus in the fibre direction and 19 MPa tensile strength and 2.41 GPa modulus in the cross direction. The newspaper composite samples were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis.