Recycling of some polymeric wastes using ionizing radiation

Recycling of waste polyethylene and worn tires is very important problem due to their huge amount and their negative impact on environment. These two polymers differ from each other in nature, as waste polyethylene is thermoplastic, while waste rubber exists in thermosetting state. Accordingly, their blends should be very interesting. The aim of this work is to modify the physical and chemical properties of their blends at different ratio. Fillers and fibers are playing an important role for polymer reinforcement cost-effective end products. The present wok investigates the impact of gamma radiation doses, up to 150 KGy, on WPE/RWRP in composites of WPE/RWRP, 60/40 with talc, feldspar, glass fiber, and antimony trioxide (fire retardant), fillers over a range of content % up to 20 %. In this context, some physico-mechanical testing, namely TS, elongation at break, elastic modulus, hardness, TGA, DSC, electric conductivity, swelling, LOI and SEM investigations were implemented. It was found that applied fillers revealed expectedly different mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, swelling and morphological properties appreciably depending critically on the microstructure, i.e. aspect ratio and degree of dispersion of the filler and adhesion at the filler-matrix interface. The latter is largely due to the lamellar nature of the filler, as lamellar filler has high aspect ratio and this increases the wettability of the filler by the matrix.