Investigation of parameters effecting oxygen gas permeability in poliolefins

The polyolefin market, which comprises large volume of materials such as polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), has experienced highest growth in recent years due to increased utilization in the automobile, consumer durables, flexible packaging and health industries. Polypropylene (PP) is an attractive candidate material for packaging applications because of its low cost and improved thermal stability compared with polyethylene. This research has concentrated on the development of methods for creating clay and ZnO nanocomposites with polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) for the purpose of improving oxygen barrier and other properties of polyolefins. PP/clay, PE/clay, PP/ZnO, PE/ZnO binary nanocomposites and PP/clay/ZnO, PE/clay/ZnO ternary nanocomposites were produced with different compositions to determine the optimum amount of nanoparticles. The oxygen barrier properties of the composites were determined at different temperature. The results showed that the filled polypropylene exhibits lower gas permeability compared to the unfilled polypropylene.