The effect of chelator and white rot fungi treatments on long hemp fibre-reinforced composites

Hemp fibre was treated using a chelator (ethylene diamine tetra methylene phosphonic acid pentasodium salt) and white rot fungi Schizophyllum commune (S.com) with the purpose of improving its interfacial bonding with a polypropylene matrix. Composites were produced by film-stacking long fibre, oriented by carding, with polypropylene (PP) and maleated polypropylene (MAPP) coupling agent. The fibre and composite densities, composite fibre and void contents, as well as fibre and composite tensile strength were analysed. Tensile strength of treated fibre composites was higher than that for untreated fibre composites, despite fibre strength reducing with treatments. This supports that interfacial bonding between hemp and PP was improved by treatment. This trend was also obtained using a modification of the simple "rule of mixtures" model taking account of voids, suggesting that this could be an appropriate means of simply modelling interfacial modification. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.