Green Biocomposites

The quest for the development of innovative materials having zero impact with high performance at affordable costs to meet the basic human and society demands results a dynamic composite materials. Green or biocomposites regarded as a high-performance or ‘advanced’ fourth generation engineered composite materials that are comparatively better and attractive in terms of environmentally friendly, composability and complete degradability of end use products. The reinforcement of renewable and environment-friendly plant based ‘lignocellulosic’ fibers with bio-based polymeric matrix (plastics) is the only ways to fabricate the green composites or to make them fully greener materials. Green composites offer a significant environmental key for both food and non-food market including the aerospace, automotive, decking and for others variety of structural applications over the past decades because of their relatively higher specific modulus and strength compared to metals. Developed bio-material undoubtedly delivers greater impact on the world economy by developing energy saving products for the improvement of life quality. Present study is designed to deliver an outline of the comprehensive recent research studies and works reported on sustainable “green” friendly biocomposites, focusing the concern on biopolymers, natural fibers, composite processing and their diverse structural applications. Currently, green composites considered as one of the emerging innovative products in materials and polymer composite science to expand the commercial application in the sectors ranging from packaging to the constructional industry.

The growing concern towards environmental problems and the urgent need for more versatile environmental friendly materials has led to increasing attention about polymer composites, i.e. fillers/reinforcing materials coming from renewable sources and biodegradable, especially from forest. The composites usually referred to as “green”, can find several industrial applications as discussed in this chapter. Biodegradable polymers coming from natural resources are also one important constituent of green composites. This chapter provides tactic for readers regarding the materials used for the fabrication and specific application of green composites in various fields. Furthermore, a discussion of the major material attributes of green composites is provided. From these focuses, a series of balancing application properties are explained. The chapter concludes that green composites have potential for use in a number of applications, but as with all design, one must carefully match the material to the application.

Many traditional materials that have been used in various engineering applications for long periods of time are being switched by new green materials to contribute meeting the demand of weight reduction, environmental issues as well as customer satisfaction attributes. Since natural fibers have many advantages, such as low cost, lightweight and environmentally friendly, researchers start put more effort in this area to utilize its benefits in producing bio-composite materials. However, design in green bio-composites has many challenges. One of the most important challenges is the limited availability of design data due to the large variety of fibers, matrices, and manufacturing processes. In consequence, several factors must be considered in the design process of green bio-composites, namely: processing consideration, selection of additives, selection of polymers, as well as good part design. Moreover, high coefficients of safety are still being used because of the difficulty to precisely model the material behavior, which in turn leads to oversize the structures. This is mainly due to the fact that the variation of material’s properties is not linear; however, it depends on how far the material is from failure. Therefore, proper testing, evaluation and manufacturing processes have to be considered by designers to be capable of producing functional produces regarding both macro and nano-scale bio-composite.

Bionanocomposite is one of the remarkable achievements of nanotechnology in material science to replace conventional non-biodegradable petroleum based plastics for packaging applications. In general, bionanocomposites are made up of biodegradable polymers (biopolymers) and bio based reinforcing material in the size range of 10–100 nm in one or more dimensions. Bio based materials could provide a solution for petroleum shortage and waste management problems. One of the potential reinforcing agents is agro industrial based is cellulose. Such composites demonstrate improved properties as compared to the neat biopolymers due the large surface area and high aspect ratio of nanoparticles. This study has given a clear overview of nanocellulose based composites by describing their isolation, surface modification, composite preparation, properties, and applications. Furthermore, the obtained results for developed bionanocomposites materials shows that it can be a promising alternative for conventional packaging materials with improved properties.

Recently, biocomposites became highly valuable due to their environmental advantages. The growing environmental awareness of people and the new stringent green policies enacted by governments has intensify the search and development of more environmentally friendly materials to preserve our immediate environment and public health. However, the selection of bio-based materials is quite difficult to perform compared to conventional materials like synthetic fibers and plastics. Hence, the use of computer aided tools for choosing bio-based materials help to minimize material selection errors and accommodates the increasing number of new materials as well as prevents financial and time loss. This review presented a brief insight of biocomposite materials selection using computer aided systems such as expert systems. Multi-criteria decision making models or tools also plays significant role in the evaluation and selection of materials. Numerous factors of various materials such as mechanical properties, material cost, environmental performance, just to name a few, are considered in the material selection process. These factors mostly contradict or even conflict with each other, which further complicates the task. Hence, to alleviate material selection problems and ease out decision making procedures, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach is employed. MCDM is classified into multi attribute decision making (MADM) and multi objective decision making (MODM). MADM is the most common approach utilized for composite material selection purposes. This chapter also discusses about life cycle assessment (LCA) of products which is one of the widely used techniques in analyzing and quantifying the effect of biocomposite products on the surrounding environment during their total life time. Finally, a Case study on material selection of Bio-resin for biocomposites using modified digital logic and weighted property method was presented.

Prosthetic socket is one of important part as it involved interface or connecting link between stump and prosthetic components. Besides the functionality of socket itself, it also involved satisfaction on patient due to the force distribution and pressure on stump. Selecting the right liner is essential in order to ensure the prosthesis fits well and is comfortable to wear. The quality and comfort of a prosthetic socket and its design can determine the daily extent of period, as the patients can use their artificial limbs and lead as normal life as possible. Technological advancement has led to wider range of modern orthopedic and prosthetic device. Fibre reinforced composites are most widely used for upper- and lower- limb prostheses due to their superior strength and excellent biocompatibility. In this review, the use of fibre reinforced composite materials for prostheses are viewed. This review article intended to present general information regarding the structure and function of type and application for current prosthetic socket design for the benefit of the reader. This paper also discussed the comfort measurement of residual limb on prosthetic socket.

Introduction of Soy Protein based bionanocomposites in the present era has made a significant contribution to extent the shelf-life of human being. It increases the food quality as well as put a huge impact on reducing the packaging waste. Bionanocomposites are high performing, light weighted green materials as compare to conventional non-biodegradable petroleum based plastic packaging materials. Most of the bionanocomposites used so far for packaging application are starch and cellulose derivatives such as polylactic acid (PLA), polycaprolactone (PCL), poly(butylenes succinate) (PBS) and polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). In the present chapter, incorporation of different inorganic nano-fillers in soft network of bio-based soy protein was obtained by green technique. The characterisation of prepared bionanocomposites, bonding pattern and their behaviour have been presented through morphological analysis, UV-visible spectroscopy, FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared) Spectroscopy, XRD (X-ray Diffraction) Spectroscopy. The thermal, mechanical biodegradability, chemical resistance and gas barrier properties of soy based nanocomposites are measured and compared. Finally a detail discussion on its packaging application and future aspect is presented.

Natural fiber reinforced polymer composites becomes the most promising and identified research area. As these composites not only offer the good mechanical strength but also are light in weight and cost effective. The reasons of popularity of this area reside in many important parameters such as recyclability, biodegradability and environment friendly. Now scientists have developed biopolymer derived from corn, soy etc. which is used to reinforce the natural fibers and developed a fully biodegradable composite material. The application of the natural fiber composites not only found in the building and constructions sectors but also in the automotive and aircrafts structures sectors. In this chapter we are discussing about the Green Biocomposites and their utilization in the automobile fields. The chapter also highlighted a general class of the various available natural fibers and their application in the automotive sectors. This chapter also provides an insight of the safety measures such as crashworthiness of the vehicles. Also a review of the current research in the field of automotive industry is presented and some conclusions for the future vehicle design using composites are suggested.

In the past decade, a growing interest in the use of green nanocomposites in industrial applications has been observed because of many advantages such as biodegradability, renewability and their relatively low cost to substitute the conventional petroleum-based polymers. The nanocomposites based on polylactic acid (PLA) have the potential to be used in automotive applications due to good mechanical properties and processability. This chapter highlights the recent developments on PLA nanocomposites as potential materials for automotive applications. One of the common methods to improve the performances of PLA is the combination of PLA with various nanofillers including layered silicates and carbon derivatives such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. Mechanical and thermal properties are the focus of this chapter as the properties are important for automotive applications. Further research in this area is also being proposed.

The utilization of bamboo fibers in polymer-based composites has expanded in the past few years due to the demand for biodegradable, sustainable and recyclable materials. This article reviews the processing of extracted bamboo fibers and their composites, ultimate mechanical properties/thermal stabilities and corresponding characterizations, as well as the applications. Currently, the challenges regarding bamboo fibers-filled polymer composites involve extraction of high quality bamboo fibers, uniform fiber dispersion/distribution in polymer matrix and/or formation of interphase between matrix-filler phases. Relationships among processing techniques, properties and structural orders are significant to guide the design of future composite.

In this chapter, an overview of various composite materials for sound absorption applications were reported and discussed in details. This includes composites made of polymer matrix reinforced with synthetic fibers and with natural fibers. This chapter also deals with composites made of recycled materials, bio-based matrix and bio-based fiber materials, hybrid biodegradable materials and surface treatment fiber composites for sound absorption applications. New developments dealing with composite materials made of lignocellulosic fiber and the pros and cons of synthetic fibers and natural fibers were also studied. This chapter also examines the critical issues regarding on composite materials and the scientific challenges faces by researchers and industries that require further research and development of composite materials made from polymer composites for their increased acceptance in the modern world for sound absorption purpose.

Green composites recently have attracted the attention of the researchers due to the advantages of low cost, renewable resource usage and biodegradability. In general, natural fibers being highly polar and hydrophilic have low interfacial shear strength (IFSS) with polymer matrix which is nonpolar and relatively hydrophobic in nature. The surface modification of natural fiber is necessary to improve the fiber/polymer compatibility and their interfacial adhesion. Natural fibers without surface modification embedded in a polymeric matrix generate unstable interfaces and the stress applied to the fiber/polymer composite is not efficiently transferred from the matrix to the fiber. Thus the beneficial reinforcement effect of the fiber remains under exploited. Among the available biopolymer, polylactic acid (PLA) is the most established biodegradable polymer. Surprisingly jute is the second most widely used natural fiber for reinforcing polylactide. Several chemical and physical treatments are performed to improve the fiber–matrix adhesion by reducing the difference between hydrophilic/hydrophobic characters of jute fiber and PLA matrix. Conventional chemical modification methods are alkalization, acetylation and bleaching. These methods are more frequently used due to their relative simplicity, low cost and efficiency. Permanganate treatment, silane treatment, peroxide treatment, shellac resin treatment are also commonly used as chemical treatments. However physical treatments such as plasma treatments, corona discharge treatments, UV treatments etc. are reported as more eco-friendly than chemical treatments. In this chapter a brief summary of all physical and chemical treatments of jute fiber reinforced PLA composites has been presented and the resulted mechanical properties are also discussed.

Undoubtedly, the advanced green composites have replaced the use of many conventional mineral based or naturally occurring single materials in wide spread industrial applications including aerospace, automotive, locomotive, chemical and biomedical industries. Specially, the reinforced natural rubber nanocomposites have drawn the attention of the research as well as industrial worlds greatly because of their superior thermal and mechanical properties without major compromise of transperancy/clarity. This chapter presents the preparation of rubber nanocomposites, characterization techniques, and the properties of the developed nanocomposites such as mechanical and thermal characteristics along with the recent applications of these nanocomposites. The rubber nanocomposite (RNC) have found their niche commercially in the tyre and sports industries providing reduced weight and energy dissipation, and enhanced air retention to the applied products.