pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S10 - Polymer nanocomposites and nanotechnology
Poster Presentation
 
 

Production and Characterization of Polyethylene/Organoclay Nanocomposite Films

GULER CEREN ALPASLAN (1)*, DENİZ SENNUR (2)

(1) ELIF PLASTIK - Yildiz Technical University - ISTANBUL - Turkey, (2) Yildiz Technical University - ISTANBUL - Turkey

One of the most useful polymers which are used in the packaging industry is polyethylene.However it is not desirable in the food packages through its high gas permeability.For this reason barrier featured polyethylene films can only be produced in multilayer extruder machines by blown extrusion technique.Although multilayer extruder machines require high cost investment monolayer and barrier,featured polyethylene films can be produced by constituting polyethylene nanocomposites instead of this technique.When the dimension of material is diminished in nanoscale it can show different properties which have in macroscopic size.It is known that,nanoparticules using is a good filler materials which improve product properties and shelf life of foods in packaging production. The aim of this study is to produce nanocomposite polyethylene films, which can be especially used in the food packaging industry.In this study the polymer films were consisted of low density polyethylene and linear low density polyethylene as polymer matrix,montmorillonite modified organoclays as gas permeability filler.They were prepared with the laboratory type film device which is integrated to the twin screw compounder.Moreover,another goal of this study is to apply production techniques which can also be suitable for the industrial scale.For increasing interfacial interactions resulting polyethylene/clay nanocomposites,the clay layers within the polymer matrix to ensure dispersion of nanometer level is required to use a compatibilizer.Therefore,maleic anhydride grafted polyethylene was used as compatibilizer.The polyethylene granules were prepared by using different ratio of organoclay by twin screw extruder.Polyethylene/organoclay nanocomposite films were prepared with the laboratory type film device which is integrated to the twin screw compounder and they were characterized in terms of thermal,gas permeability and mechanical properties.At the end of the tests,optimum clay amount was determined.