Biocomposites-Materials modification to increase the processabilty at high fiber content

“The current application aims at facilitating a substantial increase in the content of renewable lignocellulosic fibers in fiber reinforced wood fiber polymer composites (WFPL). The target is to enable production of WFPL’s with a fiber content >> 60%. For the forest based industries, this will create new market segments within construction, automotive and industrial goods, and consequently promote sustainable industrialization.In this project, the surface of the lignocellulose fibers will be hydrophobized by scalable state of art water-based chemistry and the properties of(i) the modified fibers (type of substituent, degree of modification, fiber length etc),(ii) the polyolefin – fiber melt (wettability, surface energy, rheology and processability)(iii) the produced biocomposite (degree of dispersion and compatibility)will be quantified and structure-material property correlations will be searched for using statistical methods.”