The Use of Plastic and Coffee Husks in Making Composite Boards

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Composite board is used in a variety of home construction projects, trimming, exterior shutters, and other home products. It's an ideal material choice due to the many benefits you can leverage. The materials used for making the composite boards are plastic sheets and coffee husks from coffee liberica and robusta. The researchers used coffee husks because the production and consumption of coffee generates huge amounts of low value waste with relatively little recycled, otherwise it will end up in landfills. It is also intended that the material created is durable and washable, with prospects of extending the realities in which it can be used. "Lightweight and strong" can translate into "less impact on the environment." Composite boards can be identified either as lightweight or strong.

METHODS

By using an accurate electrical weighing scale, the researchers divided the coffee grounds into 9 parts and 3 of them are 23 grams, 3 are 46 and the remaining 3 are 69 grams. The three 23 grams of coffee got 207 grams of plastic each, then three grams of 46 grams of coffee got 184 grams of plastic each, and the three 69 grams of coffee each got 161 grams of plastic. Then, the conductor of the Two-Roll Mill Machine and the Compression Machine started the process of using the said Two-Roll Mill Machine. The conductor used a square metal mold plate to put the processed plastic and coffee grounds in for an average time of 5-10 minutes. Lastly, the conductor took out the already complete Composite Boards and by using a heat resistant glove.

RESULTS

Tensile strength was used as methods for determining the convenience and to know whether the Coffee is compatible to be an additional material in making composite boards or not. Specimens are placed in the grips of a Universal Test Machine at a specified grip separation and pulled until failure. For ASTM D3039 the test speed can be determined by the material specification or time to failure (1 to 10 minutes). A typical test speed for standard test specimens is 2 mm/min (0.05 in/min). An extensometer or strain gauge is used to determine elongation and tensile modulus. The results showed that Coffee grounds can be an alternative material for making composite material.

DISCUSSIONS

The results indicated that the coffee husks and HDPE can be formed into composite boards. The composite boards sustained enough forces to be considered stronger than average pure HDPE made composite board.