Investigation on Effect of Gas Concentration in Distinguishing Conventional Plastic and Bioplastic for Plastic Recycling

Distinguishing type of plastic was important for the recycling process. In this project, the effect on gas concentration released from composite was studied to distinguish between conventional plastic and bioplastic. This project involved the fabrication of a composite from polypropylene (PP), empty fruit bunches (EFB), and recycle acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (NBRr), with PP used as a conventional plastic and PP/NBRr/EFB used as a bioplastic. Trans-polyctylene (TOR) was used as a compatibilizer to evaluate the effect on the PP/NBRr/EFB. Tensile testing and SEM were conducted to study the mechanical properties and morphological properties on the PP/NBRr/EFB and the PP/NBRr/EFB/TOR composite. The gas sensor (MQ135) was used in this study to detect the presence of NH3 and CO2 released from heating conventional plastic and bioplastic. From the overall result, composite with TOR as compatibilizer has shown better performance than composite without TOR in mechanical, morphological and gas sensor testing. By using MATLAB software, it shows that from gas sensor testing, it can be verified to distinguish between conventional plastic and bioplastics for plastic recycling. The average classification obtained from the Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) was 99.29 % accurate.