Anion-releasing automobile interior decoration material produced from kenaf /PES

Abstract

Nowadays, the quantities of automobile becomes more and more all over the world, and people spend more time inside the car than before, so the air quality inside the car is more concerned by many researchers today. The air pollution in car is mainly caused by the interior decoration which arises from polymer materials including door, decorative cloth, and ground mat and sit mat. These materials are generally produced using chemical fibers that release harmful gases such as formaldehyde, acetone, and dimethylbenzene and affect the air quality in the confined in-car space. In order to solve this problem and improve the air quality, a new automobile interior decoration material with the function of anion-releasing is developed by kenaf and low-melting-point polyester (PES) after adding a tourmaline anion agent. Orthogonal method is applied to optimize anion parameters as the following: tourmaline agent concentration 500 g/L, dipping twice and each for 20 min. Then the SPSS software is utilized to analyze the anion releasing amounts as influenced by different factors and the optimized processing scheme is the following: hot-pressing at 168.9 °C for 5.3 min under pressure 5.5 MPa. The automobile interior decoration material produced by the above optimized parameters can reach the maximum releasing amount of anion as high as 1480-1690 ion/cm3. Meanwhile, the anions can adsorb, gather and deposit the suspended particles in air. Because of the piezoelectricity and pyroelectricity of tourmaline powder, the anions could be recycled and released continuously to improve the air quality inside the car.