Pretreatment effects of seaweed on the thermal and mechanical properties of seaweed/polypropylene biocomposites

The seaweed (SW) reinforced polypropylene (PP) biocomposites were prepared to investigated the SW species and pretreatment effect on the characteristics of biocomposites. The SW was derived from residue obtained during bioenergy production processing. Laminaria japonica in the form of brown algae (BA) and Enteromorpha crinite in the form of green algae (GA) were characterized by pretreatments with ethanol, acetone, and sulfuric acid. SW/PP biocomposites were manufactured with various contents of SW by compression molding and the thermal and mechanical properties of the biocomposites were investigated. GA/PP biocomposites showed higher thermal stability and greater impact strength than BA/PP biocomposites. The pretreatment of GA with sulfuric acid resulted in the highest thermal stability among various pretreatments. Sulfuric acid-treated GA/PP biocomposites showed generally improved thermal and mechanical properties.