Abstract:
Abstract: With the increasing scarcity of oil resources and the aggravation of white pollution, environmentally friendly biodegradable materials have become a topic of great interest in research and development. Among the biodegradable polymers, polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most studied and promising aliphatic polyesters derived from starch by microbial fermentation, which offers excellent properties such as high strength, good transparency and biodegradability. However, PLA also has disadvantages of poor toughness and high cost. PLA is often reinforced with natural fibers like wood flour, bamboo flour, sisal, coir and hemp to reduce the production cost. Among the various natural fibers, tea fiber is cheap and widely available especially in China. The worldwide consumption of tea is about 4.5 million tons annually, and it always ends up with lots of waste tea leaves, stalks and dusts during the process of tea production and consumption. The tea residue to use as organic filler in polymer composites shows a great prospect because of its lignocelluloses behaviors and low cost. To our knowledge, there have been few researches about the biodegradable composites by using waste tea residue as organic filler so far. However, the moisture absorption tendency and poor interfacial bonding properties of the fibers are the main drawbacks of PLA/natural fiber biomass composites. Many researches focused on surface modification of natural fibers through different methods such as mercerization, silane treatment and isocyanate treatment to improve the compatibility between natural fiber and PLA matrix. Melting grafting copolymerization is a novel modification technology for plastics, the use of PLA grafted with glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) is a relatively efficient strategy to improve both the interface adhesion and toughness of natural fiber/PLA biomass composites. In order to decrease the cost of PLA, and expand its applicability, and also to make full use of the waste tea residue, tea dust (TD) was blended with PLA to prepare environmental friendly TD/PLA composites by injection molding. PLA grafted with glycidyl methacrylate (GMA-g-PLA) was synthesized by melt grafting PLA with GMA using dicumyl peroxide as initiator, the graft copolymer was confirmed by FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectrum) and 1H-NMR (H nuclear magnetic resonance), and the influences of GMA-g-PLA addition on the mechanical, thermal and moisture resistance properties of TD/PLA composite were investigated. GMA grafting onto PLA was confirmed by FTIR and11H-NMR spectroscopic technology. The phase morphology, thermal stability, moisture resistance and mechanical properties of TD/PLA composites compatibilized with GMA-g-PLA were improved compared with those of the composites without adding compatibilizer, as characterized by scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, water adsorption test and using a universal materials tester, respectively. The GMA was successfully grafted onto PLA, which was confirmed by the FTIR and 1H-NMR technology, and the grafted GMA content was 4.88% calculated by 1H-NMR analysis. The addition of GMA-g-PLA in the biocomposites obviously improved the mechanical, thermal and water adsorption properties of TD/PLA composites, which is attributed to the greater compatibility between TD and PLA matrix. The TD/PLA biomass composite with 10% (mass fraction) GMA-g-PLA showed the optimum mechanical properties, with an improvement of 43.8% in tensile strength, 42.1% in flexural strength, 24.1% in notched impact strength, 26.5% in tensile modulus, 10.4% in flexural modulus and 26.1% in elongation at break, respectively.