Recovering Properties of Recycled HIPS Through Incorporation of SBS Triblock Copolymer

Toughening glassy thermoplastics by blending a rubbery material to the polymeric matrix has been extensively studied. In this work, we evaluated the resulting properties of recycled high impact polystyrene (HIPS), after the incorporation of either radial or linear SBS triblock copolymers. The blends were melt mixed using a twin-screw extruder. The copolymers were added at 5, 10 and 15% weight percent. The investigated properties included the determination of the melt flow index, the morphology and the mechanical behavior according to standard tension, flexion and impact methods of all formulated blends. In all cases, the radial SBS was more efficient in recovering the HIPS properties than the linear SBS, when comparing the properties of the blends with the properties of recycled HIPS.