Development of a bamboo-banana fiber reinforced polyester hybrid composite for micro wind turbine applications.

Abstract

Wind energy is among the cheapest means for the production of renewable energy currently existing. But wind power generation will be impossible without an effective or an efficient wind blade. Currently, wind turbine blades are high performance synthetic and hybrid material structures. Bamboo has been observed to be more sustainable than the current materials in terms of life cycle and renewability of the resource. Bamboo which is known to have notable properties of good strength and high modulus across the culm wall has been used to design wind turbine blade. However, it has low energy output compared to the current materials used like glass fibers. Hence an attempt was made to manufacture a composite by combining bamboo with banana fibers due to their high strength, light weight and smaller elongation to increase on the performance of the composite to meet the required properties to be fully used in small wind turbines. Chemical method of bamboo fiber extraction and mechanical method of banana fiber extraction were used. Treatment of fibers with sodium hydroxide to further lignin, hemicellulose and other fiber remnants removal for the improvement of bond and interfacial shear strength of the bamboo fiber. Next, the composite was fabricated in different bamboo to banana fiber ratio using hand lay-up technique. Then tensile and morphological properties were tested.