Reactive extrusion of polypropylene and nylon blends from commingled plastic wastes

Reactive extrusion for recycled PP/nylon blends from commingled plastic wastes was investigated through thermal, morphological, mechanical and rheological studies. From SEM investigation, we found improved surface morphologies with homogeneous domains in the recycled 75/25 PP/nylon blends compatibilized with copolymers containing maleic anhydride (MA) as a reactive functional group; SEBS-g-MA, PP-g-MA, PE-g-MA. Especially, SEBS-g-MA thermoplastic elastomer which is highly reactive with amine terminal group of nylon, resulted in a large increase of impact strength above nearly 200%. This compatibilization effect resulted from the increase of interfacial adhesion and the reduction of domain size of dispersed phase in PP/nylon blend system. To confirm the existence of this network structure, we measured a dynamic rheological properties.