The investigation of the effect of the nucleating additives on the thermal and mechanical properties of recycled polypropylene

There are a lot of studies which entreated the effects of nucleating and clarifyıng agents on polypropylene 's properties. This is because, polypropylene is one of the most popular industrial plastic. Polypropylene is a polyolefine which is on of the most comman termoplastik material. Polypropylene find itself a place in a lot of application such as automotive, food, packacing, textile etc. Several ways can consider to improve the properties of final products which have produced from polypropylene via several processing methods. Some of the ways are parameters optimisation during processing, blendin with different polymers and special additives. The most basic purpose of the engineering is to produce more profitable and usefel items. But with increasing environmental awareness, the term of reuse or recycle is getting more and more important. The subject of this study is the effects of nucleating and clarifying agents on the isotactic virgin polypropylene 's mechanical and termal properties via changing the content ratio of nucleating and clarifying agent. In addition of this, recycling effect also studied. Virgin polypropylene extruded twice with twin screw extruder to create thermal and physchical stress on the samples. A granulator use to granulate samples again and again. This material called "Recycled polypropylene". Virgin polypropylene and racycled polypropylene were blended with the ratios of 0/100%, 50/50%, 75/25% and 100/0% (recycled/virgin) respectively. Akkat Clarifier/Nucleator PP/F 109311was also added the system with the ratios of 0%, 1%, 3% and %6 by weight. Whole compounds produced by twin screw extruder to increase homogenization. Melt Flow Index, Tensile Strength, Shore Hardness, Flexural Strength and DSC analyses performed with whole 16 samples. The analyse results of Shore Hardness tests, there are no visible increase contingently recycle or additive ratio. Buti interestingly, slight increase (5 %) can observe with the content of 50 % and 75 % recycle polypropylene presence. Flexural modulus a of the samples are inversely correlated with the recycle ratio. But, flecural modulus values have some serious increase by adding the nucleation and clarifying agents to the samples, Tensile strength analyses have same results. The value of the young modulus were inversely correlated with the recycle ratio. Bu there is a correlation with the nucleating and clearifying agent content. Nucleating and clearifying agents did couse the increase of the crystallisation peak temperature. Also, they did 1,4 °C increase on the melting point of samples with the content of 6 % nucleating and clearifying agents. With the reslults of thermal and mechanical analyses, it can be easlily said that, adding the 3 % nucleating and clearifying agents can provide almost same properties 50 % recycle polypropylene comparing with the virgin isotactic polyproply.