Study of composites based on polypropylene and calcium carbonate by experimental design

Calcium carbonate is without doubt the most widely used mineral filler. There are good reasons for this popularity, namely the combination of numerous deposits of that material and its suitability for a wide range of applications. In this paper results of rheological analysis based on melt index values of polypropylene composites (PP composites), prepared with different grades of calcium carbonate are reported. The study showed that the experimental design can be used as an important tool to evaluate the effect of CaCO3 grade and its content in polypropylene (PP). It was observed that the addition of calcium carbonate of different particle sizes and contents provoked a significant change in the rheological behavior of the composites analysed.