engleski

Chemical and Thermal Properties of WPC Surface After Exposure to Concentrated acids

When producing wood-plastic composites (WPC) as functional filler for improving the properties natural wood and wooden fibres are used ; unlike classic industrial processing of synthetic polymer where talc, chalk and inorganic fibres are used as filler. Considering that wood is organic polymer it is significantly submissive to effects of different degradation factors, thus the possibilities of using WPC significantly depend on filler characteristics and matrix-filler interaction. By continually expanding the potential use of WPC, a question arises of surface durability to chemical reagents which could come in contact, in larger or lesser extent, with the material during installation and/or in everyday use. In order to gain insight into the specified, in this paper the impact of three concentrated acids and length of time of sample exposure on the character of the WPC surface degradation was examined. By comparative analysis of results obtained by infrared spectroscopic (FT-IR) method chemical changes were found in the surface structure of commercially produced WPC with PVC based matrix, which is primarily attributable to the degradation of the wood filler. The analysis of the test results of the thermal properties obtained by a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) supports this statement since the value of the glass transition temperature (Tg) does not vary significantly depending on the length of treatment.

WPC; acids; exposure; chemical changes; FT-IR; DSC

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