Characterization and development of biocomposites from jute & coir fibres

Composites are widely used in our daily life. Due to their low weight and ability to be tailored for specific end use they have gained a considerable ground in the high performance applications, such as aerospace and automobile industry. However, the use of polymers that can be recycled when used with carbon and other niche fibres render the composite non-recyclable. This has become a major issue as the landfills are filling up at a faster pace along with the need for going green due to global warming. To tackle these issues research in recent years has been focused on substituting non-biodegradable based composites with bio-degradable ones. In order to achieve the goal of recyclable and biodegradable composites, natural fibres are the best choice for production of fibre reinforced composites. The overhead for using natural fibres is their cleaning and processing needs. Bio-composites were produced using jute and coir as reinforcing phase and epoxy (L-12) resin as continuous phase. Compression moulding technology was used to produce the composites and curing was done at a temperature of 120o C for 20 minutes. Square shaped moulds were used for this purpose. Composites were produced using two different composition of fibres (50: 50 and 60: 40) and at two different fibre lengths (3cm and 6cm). Fibres were characterized for various physical properties like morphology, density, moisture regain, water absorption and mechanical properties. Fibres were also characterized using Thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA). It was found that jute and coir can be used for production of composites, to be used for domestic purpose. Composites were tested for various properties like moisture regain, tensile strength and bending stress. Study revealed that the properties of composites depend on type of fibre, length of fibre and % of fibre used for producing the composite.