Study of the effect of solid waste reinforcing on the thermal behavior of a nanocomposite

Abstract

In our work, we are interested in polystyrene nanocomposites prepared by in situ polymerization by adding as reinforcement particles from solid waste. It has been shown that due to their small size, nanoparticles can be incorporated easily into the matrix and can provide very substantial improvements to mechanical, thermal and electrical properties of the nanocomposite. In this sense, we conducted our study on nanocomposites based on polystyrene (PS) as a reinforcement with CaCO₃ particles from solid waste at different load percentages, typically between 1 and 10% by weight. First morphological and structural analysis was performed using the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). After the in-situ synthesis by polymerization of these nanocomposites were studied new thermal degradation of the material based on the thermal aging by UV light and sunlight. To characterize the effect of this damage we used micrographs by optical microscope and a scanning calorimetry.