Green Composites from Natural Fibers and Bacterial Bioplastic

Green composites from natural/biofibers and bioplastics are the wave of the future for designing eco-friendly novel materials, especially for automotive applications. Eco-friendly green composites are fabricated from chopped natural fibers and a bacterial bioplastic, polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) through extrusion followed by the injection molding process. The bast fiber (hemp) based green composites showed improved stiffness while leaf (henequen) and fruit (coir) type natural fiber-based composites showed improved toughness. The effect of hemp-fiber concentration on tensile and impact properties of the resulting composites is investigated. Authors: M. Misra, A. K. Mohanty, N. Cerneka, L. T. Drzal, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI.