EnvironmentAsia (Jul 2016)
Effect of Biomass Waste Filler on the Dielectric Properties of Polymer Composites
Abstract
The effect of biomass waste fillers, namely coconut shell (CS) and sugarcane bagasse (SCB) on the dielectric properties of polymer composite was investigated. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential of CS and SCB to be used as conductive filler (natural source of carbon) in the polymer composite. The purpose of the conductive filler is to increase the dielectric properties of the polymer composite. The carbon composition the CS and SCB was determine through carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur (CHNS) elemental analysis whereas the structural morphology of CS and SCB particles was examined by using scanning electron microscope. Room temperature open-ended coaxial line method was used to determine the dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor over broad band frequency range of 200 MHz-20 GHz. Based on this study, the results found that CS and SCB contain 48% and 44% of carbon, which is potentially useful to be used as conductive elements in the polymer composite. From SEM morphology, presence of irregular shape particles (size ≈ 200 μm) and macroporous structure (size ≈ 2.5 μm) were detected on CS and SCB. For dielectric properties measurement, it was measured that the average dielectric constant (ε') is 3.062 and 3.007 whereas the average dielectric loss factor (ε") is 0.282 and 0.273 respectively for CS/polymer and SCB/polymer composites. The presence of the biomass waste fillers have improved the dielectric properties of the polymer based composite (ε' = 2.920, ε" = 0.231). However, the increased in the dielectric properties is not highly significant, i.e. up to 4.86 % increase in ε' and 20% increase in ε". The biomass waste filler reinforced polymer composites show typical dielectric relaxation characteristic at frequency of 10 GHz - 20 GHz and could be used as conducting polymer composite for suppressing EMI at high frequency range.
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