From industrial jute fibre spinning wastes to biofibre-reinforced plastics

A huge amount of jute caddies is generated as a by-product in jute spinning industries solid waste is generally disposed of either in landfilling or burned as boiler fuel triggers environmental pollution. Owing to their higher fibre length and moderate single fibre tensile properties, the waste fibres in jute caddies can be transformed into dry fibre preform which in turn could be used in the production of composites. In this work, jute caddies were cleaned by compressed air before being pressed into dry fibre preform in order to increase the fibre packing capacity in the composites. Thermoplastic composites were manufactured by combining 40 % fibre with 60 % polypropylene (PP) matrix (by weight) using a hot press machine. The effect of chemical treatments (alkali and benzoyl chloride) on jute fibre was characterized by FTIR, TGA, and SEM. Tensile and flexural properties were evaluated to see the performance of composites. The findings of this study demonstrated that this newly developed dry short fibre jute caddies-based thermoplastic composites possess improved flexural properties by ⁓42.75 % if they are chemically modified with binders. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) can react with the functional groups of jute fibre to form strong hydrogen bonding that may result in enhanced bending properties of the composites. Therefore, the proposed composite made from jute caddies waste could be ideally used in semi-structural composite applications leading to a sustainable approach to disposing of jute industry solid waste through a circular economy.