Investigating the Effects of Tobacco Lignin on Polypropylene

Irfan Tahir, John Rapinac, Abutunis Abdulaziz, Venkata Gireesh Menta

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

The utilization of eco-friendly materials, such as lignin, for higher value product applications became increasingly important as environmental concerns due to global warming increased. Melt blending is one of the easy ways to increase the usage of lignin in commercial applications. However, the degradation of the final product performance and increase in the production time and costs are of major concern. In the current work, the effects of blending lignin, extracted from tobacco plants, with polypropylene (PP) on the injection molding parameters, physical, thermal and mechanical properties are investigated. Blends of lignin (5, 15 and 30% by wt.) with PP were prepared using a Filabot single screw extruder. Results show that tensile strength decreases by 3.2%, 9.9% and 5.4% at 5 wt. %, 15 wt. %, and 30 wt. % of lignin addition, respectively. The tensile stiffness was almost unaffected by the addition of up to 15% lignin, but a 23% increase was observed at 30 wt. % loading. When compared to lignin processed via expensive processes, such as acetylation, tobacco lignin showed superior performance. The DSC results show unaffected crystallization and melting temperatures but a decrease in enthalpies and percentage of crystallinity. The SEM and optical mi-crographs of the coupon cross-sections show that the extrusion process has achieved a uniform distribution of lignin particles in the PP. Thermogravimetric analysis results show that tobacco lignin accelerates the onset decomposition temperature but does not influence the decomposition peak temperature. The increase in lignin content did not have a significant influence on the injection molding parameters, implying no additional processing costs for adding lignin to the PP. Overall, the performance of the tobacco lignin is comparable, if not better, than that of processed lignin re-ported in the literature.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number706
JournalPolymers
Volume14
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We want to thank the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) for supplying the novel tobacco lignin materials. We also want to thank Alexey Kacharov, Sergiy Yemet, and Eric Singsaas from NRRI for their support.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • Biopolymers
  • Blends
  • Characterization
  • Lignin
  • Polypropylene
  • Tobacco lignin

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