Advantages Of Synthetic Plastics

1. Introduction The prices of raw materials for engineering and standard plastics are increasing day by day. The raw material for synthetic plastics comes from natural (fossil) resources (e.g. petroleum) which are of limited stock. It takes hundreds of years for the fossil resources to get formed, while their uses are so rapid that their available amount is decreasing day by day. Moreover synthetic polymers are non bio-degradable in nature and so application of these is a serious threat to our surrounding environment. Therefore concern has been shifted towards using such materials which are bio-degradable and eco-friendly. Biocomposites are such materials which are obtained by combining natural fillers with polymer matrices. The combination

1. Chemical structure of cellulose [6]

3. Uses and applications of natural fibers
The environmental friendly and biodegradable nature of natural fiber has enabled it to be used in composite materials as filler. Over the past few decades natural fibers have been able to replace the synthetic fibers in composites materials due to many superior properties like low cost, high stiffness to weight ratio, high availability, low density and biodegradability.
Polymer composite materials are widely used in industries like aircraft, automotive and submarine due to their great mechanical and thermal properties. But, the polymer and synthetic materials are non- biodegradable. Therefore the use and manufacturing of these materials will have harmful effect on environment. In contrast, natural fibers are renewable, biodegradable and environmentally friendly materials. Cellulose fibre has been applied as reinforced polymer composite in building, bridge construction and automotive [7].

4. Anatomy of bamboo

In their experiment bamboo culms of 70 cm-80 cm in length were first cut from raw bamboo using saw machine. Then these culms were put in an autoclave containing overheated steam at 175ºc temperature and 0.7-0.8 MPa pressure and kept there for 60 minutes. After this the steam was suddenly released for 5 minutes. The process of sudden release of steam was repeated for nine times continuously in order to assure complete fracture of the cell wall. Then the samples were washed with hot water along with soap at 90-950C for 15 minutes to remove ash. Finally these were dried in the oven for 24 hours at 1050C. Shunliu Shao et al. used steam explosion method for the extraction of fibers from bamboo culms [2#].First chips were made from the bamboo internodes. Then these were put in a steam exploder. The sample was then steam exploded at 2100C temperature and 2 MPa pressure for 5 minutes. The sample was then collected and air dried at room temperature. By scanning electron microscopy it was observed that the surface of steam-exploded fibers was rough and covered with particles