Alkaline Effect on Characterization of Discarded Waste of Moringa oleifera Fiber as a Potential Eco-friendly Reinforcement for Biocomposites

Abstract

Environmental friendly nature of natural fiber has magnetized many as the prospective reinforcement in biocomposite. Furthermore, the natural fibers excel in the application of light weight engineering structures. The main aim of this study is to extract and characterize Moringa oleifera fruit fibers as green fiber for natural fiber based polymer composite. The fiber bundle samples were prepared as per the standard ASTM techniques and tests were performed. After the extraction of fibers through manual retting, the anatomy, density and tensile tests along with XRD, TGA, DSC and SEM analysis were studied for fiber bundles. The results acquired from the experimentation authenticate that M. oleifera fruit fibers can be deemed as a prospective green fiber for the reinforcement of biocomposite for several engineering commercial products. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.