Investigation in to tribo potential of rice husk (RH) char reinforced epoxy composite

Abstract

Rice husk (RH) is an agricultural waste material abundantly available in rice-producing countries. They are the natural sheaths that from on rice grains during their growth. Removal during the refining of rice, these husks have no commercial interest. The annual rice husk production in India amounts is generally approximately 12 million tons. Rice husk is generally not recommended as cattle feed since cellulose and other sugar contents are low. Worldwide production of rice husk is about 120 million tons per year. That makes the rice husk one of the largest readily available but also one of the most under-utilized resources. Increase of environmental awareness has led to a growing interest in researching ways of an effective utilization of rice by-product, from which rice husk is particularly valuable due to its high content of amorphous silica .But it is interesting to note that rice husk contains 20% ash, 22% lignin, 38% cellulose, 18% pentosans and 2% moisture. It is felt that the value of this agricultural residue can be upgraded by bonding with resin to produce composite suitable for tribological applications.

Keeping this in view the present work has been under taken to develop a polymer matrix composite (epoxy resin) using RH char and to study its tribological behavior, the new hard porous carbon material rice husk char (RH char) has been developed by carburizing rice husk as the main raw material at three different tempreture range 850°c, 9000c and 950°c. The composite are prepared with different volume fraction of RH Char. Experiments have been conducted under laboratory condition using pin-on-disk wear tester. All the experiments have been conducted under dry condition only with different variables. Micro structure examination (SEM) of the worn surfaces has been carried out to study the effect of RH char on wear bahaviour.