Surface treatment of recycled carbon fibre for interfacial enhancement in reinforced polypropylene product

Abstract

Recycled carbon fibre (rCF) is used in various applications as measures to reduce the carbon fibre waste in landfill. This study focuses on using rCF in powder form in injection moulded polypropylene (PP) products. The rCF was treated with 0.5 mol/L and 1.0 mol/L nitric acid. The tensile and flexural properties were evaluated and morphological surface of the samples was characterised using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). As the result, higher concentration of nitric acid increased the tensile strength but leads to lower flexural strength. Apart from that, the environmental assessment using OpenLCA software shows that the addition of RCF filler loading leads to reduction of climate change and acidification potential.