pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S09 - Reactive Processing
Oral Presentation
 
 

Electron induced reactive processing of polypropylene/ethylene octene copolymer blends – a new method to produce toughened polypropylene

Zschech Carsten (1)*, Gohs Uwe (1), Heinrich Gert (1)

(1) Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e.V. - Dresden - Germany

Polypropylene (PP) belongs to one of the most used commodity polymers due to its exceptional properties including good chemical resistance, mechanical properties and processability at low price level. In addition to traditional applications, it is increasingly used as functional material in automotive industries, but its low impact resistance limits this application. Consequently, it is blended with a rubber in order to increase its toughness. PP/ethylene octene copolymer (EOC) blends show higher impact strength in comparison to other PP/rubber blends. The main drawback of this method is a reduction of E-modulus and tensile strength. In addition, the weak interfacial interaction between EOC and PP phases negatively effects the final properties of this blend. Thus, the PP/EOC interface has to be modified. Based on our previous works on PP/EOC thermoplastic vulcanizates, we firstly tested our continuous pilot plant for electron induced reactive processing (EIReP) to prepare EOC based toughened PP. This novel reactive processing method offers a high efficiency as well as a local and temporal precise generation of radicals. We investigated the mechanical, morphological and rheological properties of toughened PP. The tensile strength of toughened PP is at the same level compared to virgin PP due to increased interfacial adhesion between sub-micrometer EOC phase in the PP matrix.