Extruded High Vf Waste-Pulp- Reinforced Cored, Wide and Thin Composites.. South America.. A World First

摘要

Pulp/PVA /polypropylene fibre/ reinforced products have been in existence since the Australian success in the 1980s (through James Hardie Industries, and ETEX) and have almost established themselves as asbestos cement board /sheet replacement products to date (about 30%) in the USA, Australia, Europe and Canada. In these current processes virgin wood pulp is used after mechanical and chemical treatments requiring vast amounts of capital investment for pulping and treatment. This makes the end product more costly. Problems have been encountered in Southern Africa with this technology where de-lamination and sagging of the products is experienced after heavy rain within six months of installation. It is a well-known fact that the tensile strength of pulp fiber goes down by 90-97% when it becomes wet. Gypsum products, which dominate the plasterboard market, are not waterproof and use up a lot of energy during manufacture. Fibre Tec Composites has developed 'hybrid 01' technology, a concept that utilizes mineral by-product waste from heavy industry (steelworks, mines of all kinds) and fibre waste from the pulp mills, in addition to alternative fibers from the agricultural sector (hemp, flax, wheat straw, bagassee, jute etc). This whilst in line with USA Concrete Roadmap 2030 principles , Fibre Futures , but implements the SEE indicator approach to materials design fundamental to sustainable industry development for this century.Thus, this approach not only ends with safe, and low cost green products but also cleans up the environment by taking up the dumped waste and minimizing dumping of usable resources. A variety of high pulp fiber volume fraction based acoustic and structural products within the building sector have been demonstrated as part of a PhD in the UK (NRI University of Greenwich, Bio Composites Center, Wales, Institute of Materials), and on commercial processes in South Africa (Everite, Group 5, J'burg Stock Exchange, WSSD Conference) and Zimbabwe (Turnall Fibre Cement, TH Group, Harare Stock Exchange), and lately since inception at JC Steele, North Carolina, Haendle in Germany with the optimized hybrid 01 extrusion process. In this brief presentation, current pilot lab-scale extrusions and commercial scale set-up work will be demonstrated together with physical performance data for these uniquely processed SEE designed products from cored specimens to thin wide panels.