You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
The improper disposal of polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles leadstoaccumulation of large amount of wastes which pose adverse effects totheenvironment such as blockage of drains. With the serious situation of wastemanagement facing the developing world, the need arises to recycle and convert theseplastic wastes to useful items. In this work, PET plastic wastes were employedintheproduction of floor tiles using fine sand and palm bunch ash (PBA) as the aggregatematerials. The plastic wastes were melted; the molten liquid plastics were mixedwithfine sand and PBA in varying ratios of 4:4:1, 6:4:1, 8:4:1 and 10:4:1 plastic-to-sandto-ash in stainless steel mold. The mixture was allowed to cure for 14 days, thereafter; the qualitative tests such as water absorption, friction coefficient, compressivestrength and tensile strength were performed on the floor tiles. Fromthe overall results, it was observed that there was minute water absorption capacity, the frictional coefficient of the composite tile having an angle of inclination from24 o to 22o , andthefrictional coefficient obtained was in the range of 0.445N/kg to 0.404N/kg. Thevaluesof the compressive strength and tensile strength increased from5.156 N/mm2 to5.896 N/mm2 , and 1.589 N/mm2 to 1.699 N/mm2 respectively as the ratio increasedform 6:4:1 to 8:4:1. Further increase in ratio to 10:4:1 resulted in a decreaseincompressive strength and tensile strength to 5.738 N/mm2 and 1.677N/mm2respectively, which indicates that ratio 8:4:1 plastic-to-sand-to-ash was the optimummixture that can withstand the maximum load of 14.74 KN before failure occurred.
