Recyclability of a glass fiber poly(butylene terephthalate) composite

Abstract The recyclability of a fiber‐reinforced poly(butylene terephthalate) (PET) composite has been studied. After treatment with a suitable silane, processed regrind composites are successfully recycled, with mechanical properties as good as a comparable, commercial composite. The three processing techniques investigated are injection molding, extrusion compression molding and compression molding. As expected, processing technique and processing parameters are important in determining the mechanical properties of the molded regrind. Our results show that injection‐ and extrusion‐compression‐molded regrind composites have good fiber bundle dispersion and fiber alignment, resulting in tensile properties better than the compression‐molded samples. On the other hand, compression‐molded samples, which show random fiber orientation and low fiber bundle dispersion, have lower tensile properties, but better impact strength than injection‐ and extrusioncompression‐molded composites.