Impact of Zinc Oxide Addition on Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches Foamed Polymer Composites for Automotive Interior Parts.

The sustainable use of agricultural waste to generate valuable products while minimizing environmental burdens is increasing rapidly. Multiple sources of fibers have been intensively studied concerning their application in various fields and industries. However, few publications have extensively discussed the property's performance of oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) composites. With main properties similar to composites currently listed for industrial applications, OPEFB is worth listing as a potential composite for industrial applications and non-structural material alternatives. OPEFB-reinforced polymer composites are expected to be applied to automotive interior parts. This study aims to determine the effect of adding zinc oxide (ZnO) and polyurethane on OPEFB-reinforced polymer composites for automotive interior parts. This composite was produced using the hand lay-up method with 70% resin, 15% OPEFB fiber, 15% polyurethane as a blowing agent, and four variations of ZnO at 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. The OPEFB particle sizes are 40, 60, 80, and 100, respectively. The composite was examined to determine mechanical, morphology, chemical, and thermal characteristics. It was observed that the addition of 20% ZnO caused ZnO agglomeration, weakening the interfacial bond between OPEFB particles, polyester, polyurethane, and ZnO filler. Overall, the results showed that adding ZnO and polyurethane to the composite increased tensile, compressive, flexural, and impact strength, as well as thermal stability with more significant values up to 160%, 225%, 100%, 100%, and 4.3%, respectively. This result depicted that the best composition was specimens with 15% ZnO and 149 microns OPEFB fibers particle size. It is considered a promising candidate to be applied in automotive interior components.

The empirical prediction of weight change and corrosion rate of low-carbon steel.

Understanding the corrosion rate of metallic building materials is very important to maximize their beneficial use of public facilities. Direct measurements of the weight change and corrosion rate would be time consuming and expensive. This study aims to develop new empirical models based on the experimental data of testing 25 specimens immersed in five different environments for predicting the weight change and corrosion rate of the low-carbon steel. Using the equation developed based on the correlation between corrosion rate and chloride ion concentration is able to predict the corrosion rate of low-carbon steel at the limited chloride ion concentration. An increase in the trend lines of plotting the modeled and measured weight change of low-carbon steel versus immersion time is very similar to each other and progressively increase with increasing of the NaCl concentration. The corrosion rate of low-carbon steel increases from 0.202 to 0.286 mm/y with increasing of the NaCl concentration from 0 to 5% (w/w) in aqueous solution. The weight change and corrosion rate of the steel material are predicted using the new empirical models to contribute to the most reliable applications of low-carbon steel building materials in the future.