ABSTRACT
Plastics, especially polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are used in enormous volumes and a possible way to reduce its waste is to recycle and reuse by value addition. In this study, waste PVC from blood bag processing industry is collected and it is then transformed into value added plastics by two different technologies. In one method, PVC is made more conducting by melt blending it with conducting polymers such as polyaniline (PAni) and conducting fillers such as acetylene black. Second method involves the production of nanocomposites of PVC with nanofillers such as nanosilica. The present work involves melt blending and compression molding of the samples and the determination of the mechanical and electrical properties of PVC. The electrical properties were determined in the DC field using cavity perturbation technique. Acetylene black is found to improve the electrical properties of PVC in the DC field. By melt blending with PVC, doped PAni sample showed very good electrical properties. The improvement in mechanical strength indicates that the addition of these conducting materials and nanofillers does not adversely affect the mechanical properties of the material.
