Electron-beam processing of wood fiber reinforced polypropylene

A reactive extrusion procedure has been developed for wood fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites, applying a small amount of reactive additive that compatibilizes the synthetic and natural polymer components, with a subsequent electron beam treatment which is a productive method of creating active sites on both matrix polymer and fibrous reinforcement. Wood fiber and polypropylene (PP) bound together through reactive additive results in a composite which has not only a high modulus of elasticity, but also significantly higher flexural and tensile strength and improved thermal tolerance over the conventional wood fiber-PP blends, and over the PP itself.