Estudio de la Reacción de Reticulación de un Polímero Termoestable Dosificado con Fibra de Banano

Epoxy resins are thermoset polymers that can be hardened by the presence of a hardening agent and in addition to a catalyst; these resins have good thermochemical properties which depend a lot on the hardening agent and one of the main studies at present is the addition of fillers (silica, carbon fiber, quartz, fiberglass, natural fibers, etc.) incorporated into the resin with the objective of reducing costs and maintaining its good thermochemical properties. The objective of this research work is to study the reticulation of the epoxy resin dosed with a natural fiber from the roots of the banana plant; for this investigation was carried out the statistical study of the granulometry of the banana fiber and then were used instrumental techniques for the characterization of the resin such as spectroscopy IR of Fourier transform, or FTIR for the characterization, steric chromatography (SEC, Size Exclusion Chromatography) for the identification of the molecular weight and H–NMR for the identification of the functional groups, in addition to verify the variation of weight according to the temperature was used the thermogravimetric analysis TGA and for the analysis of reticulation was used the Differential Scanning Calorimetry DSC. With all these techniques they were of great help for the analysis of cross–linking of the epoxy resin dosed with banana fiber, obtaining as a dosage formed by epoxy resin plus hardener polyester plus 6.8% of banana fiber and with a granulometry of 25 μm resulting in a reticulation energy (ΔH) of 272 J/g and a reticulation temperature of 130°C on compared whit the resin without a metered load. In all the results it was possible to demonstrate that the influence of the fiber in the polymer matrix was significant, so it is very important the granulometric analysis of the load to be dosed, since the particle size influences directly on the polymer chain modifying its energy. reticulation and therefore its temperature.