A. Sammaiah¹, K. V. Padmaja¹, K. I. Suresh^*,2, R. B. N. Prasad¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.4, No.2, pp. 113-122, 2016, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2015.634118

Abstract This article reports the effect of epoxidized jatropha oil (EJO) on the thermal, cure and viscoelastic properties of epoxy resins. Epoxidized jatropha oil with an oxirane value of 5.0 was prepared and epoxy formulations containing different concentrations of EJO were evaluated for cure, morphology, thermal and viscoelastic properties. The curing temperature of the formulations increased with increasing EJO content. The glass transition temperature of the cured films decreased from 56 °C for unmodified epoxy resin to 23 °C for the sample with 60 wt% EJO reactive diluent, suggesting good plasticizing action. The thermal decomposition was only marginally affected. More >

Flávio Pereira¹, João Pereira², Nádia Paiva³, João Ferra³, Jorge Manuel Martins^1,4, Fernão D. Magalhães¹, and Luísa Carvalho^1,4*

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.4, No.1, pp. 41-46, 2016, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2015.634128

Abstract This work studies the use of soy protein as a natural formaldehyde scavenger in wood particleboard production. The protein is incorporated in two forms: a) as a powder, during the blending process of wood particles with urea-formaldehyde binder resin, and b) as an aqueous solution, added at different times during resin synthesis. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate the signifi cance level of two effects (amount of added soy and time of addition) on internal bond strength, thickness swelling, and formaldehyde content of the resulting panels. The results showed that soy protein can contribute to decrease the formaldehyde… More >

D.S. Liu^1,2, Z.H. Fong¹, I.H. Lin¹, Z.W. Zhuang¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.93, No.6, pp. 441-468, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2013.093.441

Abstract In this study, we proposed a novel numerical technique to simulate the transient moisture diffusion process and to apply it to heterogeneous composite resins. The method is based on a heterogeneous hybrid moisture element (HHME), with properties determined through an equivalent hybrid moisture capacitance/ conductance matrix that was calculated using the conventional finite element formulation in space discretization and the q-method in time discretization, with similar mass/stiffness properties and matrix condensing operations. A coupled HHME with finite element scheme was developed and implemented in the computer code by using the commercial software MATLAB to analyze the transient moisture diffusion process… More >

Shishir Sinha¹, Vinay Kumar²

FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.5, No.3, pp. 297-312, 2009, DOI:10.3970/fdmp.2009.005.297

Abstract High-capacity ion exchange resins based on Poly Methyl Methacrylate (PMMA) was developed during this study having higher mechanical strength, stable and, hydrophilic in nature compared to Poly styrene (PS) based systems. PMMA was cross-linked by Di Vinyl Benzene (DVB) to get macro porous PMMA-DVB resins by suspension polymerization. PMMA-DVB resins were surface modified by nitration followed by amination under appropriate temperature conditions. Change in the color of resin from white to pale yellow and pale yellow to golden yellow as well as characteristic peaks of NO2at 700 cm-1and 1400 cm-1and 3100-3200 cm-1for NH2group in FTIR spectroscopy confirmed the presence of… More >