Compatibilizing and toughening blends of recycled acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene/recycled high impact polystyrene blends via styrene-butadiene-glycidyl methacrylate terpolymer

Xiangning Meng, Yingchun Li*, Najla AlMasoud, Wensheng Wang, Taghrid S. Alomar, Jie Li, Xinming Ye, Hassan Algadi, Ilwoo Seok*, Handong Li, Ben Bin Xu*, Na Lu, Zeinhom M. El-Bahy, Zhanhu Guo*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

55 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

To increase the effectiveness of recovered acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (rABS) and recycled high impact polystyrene (rHIPS), styrene-butadiene-glycidyl methacrylate (SBG) was incorporated to the rABS/rHIPS system by melt blending for the first time. Multiple epoxy groups in SBG can combine with the butadiene ageing groups in rABS/rHIPS to generate ester groups, repairing the broken molecular chains, improving the compatibility between the two phases, and enhancing the mechanical properties of the blends. The findings demonstrated that adding SBG greatly increased the blends' molecular weight, impact strength, tensile strength, flexural strength, storage modulus, loss modulus, and complex viscosity. When SBG content was 8 wt%, the notch impact strength of the blends reached 8.84 kJ/m2, which was 108% higher than that of rABS/rHIPS. In addition, the interface between polybutadiene (PB) phase and styrene-acrylonitrile copolymer (SAN) phase became more blurred, and the compatibility of the two phases was improved, which enabled the high-value recovery of rABS/rHIPS.
Original languageEnglish
Article number125856
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalPolymer
Volume272
Early online date7 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Apr 2023

Keywords

  • Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene
  • High impact-resistance polystyrene
  • Toughening

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