YIELD STRENGTH OF LOW-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE-POLYPROPYLENE BLENDS

Polymer waste recycling is becoming a major problem, because huge amou nts of synthetic polymers are manufactured every year for many differe nt purposes. Polymer scraps are gathered from the Municipal Solid Wast e (MSW). Within those wastes there are several different polyolefins-s uch as polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene-all incompatible w ith each other. In order to recycle these polymers, compatibilization of these polyolefins is needed to avoid high sorting costs and unaccep tably low market-value products. In this work, the compatibilization o f low-density polyethylene with polypropylene is accomplished through the addition of maleated polyethylene and maleated polypropylene. Pred iction of the tensile properties of these blends is attempted, using a model based on continuity of phases in a two-components mixture of th ermoplastics. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.