Waste management by recycling of polymers with reinforcement of metal powder

Recycling of plastics/polymers is one of the waste management techniques which have been followed by many researchers. In past 20 years large number of applications in this field has been highlighted. But hither to very few have reported on plastic waste management by recycling of polymers with reinforcement of metal powder. In the present work an effort has been made to perform recycling of waste plastic/polymer with reinforcement of metal powder by controlling the melt flow index (MFI). The present study of recycling of waste plastic has been performed on single screw extruder machine by considering various input parameters (namely: barrel temperature, die temperature, and screw speed/rpm). Investigations were performed for the parametric optimization of single screw extruder machine for different mechanical/metallurgical properties (like: porosity, peak elongation, break strength, Shore D hardness) with the help of case study of recycled high density polyethylene (HDPE)100%, HDPE90% + Fe10%, low density polyethylene (LDPE)100% and LDPE94 + 6% (by wt.). As HDPE and LDPE do not decompose naturally, this nature makes these polymers suitable for structural applications (like in beams and reinforced concrete cements (RCC) structures).