Determining the role of the method used to recycle polypropylene waste materials from automotive industry using sepiolite and zeolite fillers

Abstract

In this work, the effectiveness of a rapid recycling method of waste polypropylene (WPP) with the addition of inorganic fillers was investigated. The experiments were performed using three types of WPP and a mixture of them (MWPP), characterized by different amount of talc content. The influence of sepiolite (micrometric size) and zeolite (nanometric size) fillers addition on newly prepared materials was analysed by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Mechanical characterizations of all the filled compounds were also performed. The data indicate that the addition of low percentage (5%) of sepiolite or LTA zeolite improves some mechanical and rheological properties of WPP-recycled materials. However, the results also show that the simple mixing of wastes and additional fillers (without preparing pellets) has an influence on the recycling process.