BLENDING OF POLYETHYLENE AND

POLYPROPYLENE POLYMER FOR FABRICATION

OF UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC CABLE OUTER
JACKET COMPRISING OF TERMITE REPELLENT

By

AMRI BIN MD ZAIN

Bachelor of science (hons) polymer technology

As233

2008770421

SUVERVISOR: PROF MADYA DR DZAIRANI KAMARUN

 INTRODUCTION:
UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC CABLE

●
●Prevent cable damage from severe weather conditions.
●
●to reduced emission into the surrounding area of the electromagnetic fields.
●Underground cables also pose no shock hazard.
●

Advantages ●No property devaluation

●

●No environmental degradation

●

●Larger current with lower resistive losses

●

●Fewer citizen resistance & protests

●

●
● Undergrounding is more expensive
disadvantages ●
● underground repairs can take days or weeks
●
● Operations And voltage control more difficult
The cross-section of the underground electric cable
 Objective

To fabricate underground electric cable outer jacket by blending polypropylene (PP)

and polyethylene (PE) polymers in the presence of termite repellent.

To determine the thermal properties of the fabricate product.

To determine the mechanical propertied of the fabricate product.

Termites Termites are essentially subterranean in
habit and exist only in tropical and
subtropical regions up to 40 on each
side of equator
Termites feed on cellulose, generally
from wood, and attack on cables is not
food, but because their path is
obstructed.
They have hard saw tooth jaws capable
of tearing through soft materials
including some metals and plastics.

High-power transmission cable destroyed by termites

 Literature review
Outer jacket of ●
●

●
●
protected by a polymeric jacket
performance needed such as good abrasion resistance, good process ability,
underground electric reasonable moisture resistance properties, and good stress cracking resistance.
[Long Life XLPE Insulated Power Cable]
cable ●
● Polyethylene was used as the jacket material.

●
● mixing of the termite repellent into the raw material of the jacket underground
electric cable method to preventing subterranean termites attack on the surface of
Termite repellent ●
●
the cable
Widely used are Bifenthrin® termite repellent, AEGIS anti-termite and
TermirepelTM
TM®.

The fabrication of the ●

●

●
●
Used the extrusion process.
the termite repellent is often vaporized or heat decomposed by the heat of high
outer jacket and termite ●
●
temperature between about 160oo and 220ooC, generated during extrusion coating.
sufficiently high termite repellent is necessary; a large amount of termite repellent
repellent must be added [United State Patern; No.4, 847,151].
 Methodology
●
Polyethylene Masterbatch

materials
●

●
● TermirepelTM
TM® 5% Master batch in Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE)
●
● Polypropylene

●
● Twin screw extruder

INSTRUMENTS Compression machine.

●
●

●
● Perkin Elmer IR-Spectrum One A (FTIR)
Perkin-Elmer TGA7 Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA)
AND MACHINES
●
●

●
● Perkin Elmer Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC7)
●
● Ray –Ran Izod Impact test equipment

Polyethylene Polypropylene Antitermite

masterbatch
masterbatch
(% by weight)
(% by weight)

Composition of Composition1 0 100 0

Composition 2 100 0 0
material for Composition 3 10 85 5
fabrication of sample Composition 4 85 10 5
Composition5 50 45 5
Composition6 45 50 5
 Fabrication ●
● termite repellent will be melting and blending with the
Polyethylene and Polypropylene as the co-polymer in a twin

process screw extruder machine with differences dosage

Sample The plate of the sample is made by use the compression

●
●

machine.
●
● preparation of the sample is for the izod impact testing

preparation ●
● Size’s Specimens: 1/8" thick x 1/2" wide x 2-1/2" long
according to the ASTM D.256

●
● Perkin Elmer Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC7-analysis the melting point
and the crystallinity of the sample.

Experimental
●
● Perkin-Elmer TGA 7 Thermogravimetric Analyzer-to analysis the assessment of
composition and thermal stability of the sample.
●
● Perkin Elmer IR-Spectrum One A-to determine the composition of the samples.
●
● Izod Impact Test (ASTM D 256)-to measure the impact values of both specimen
types
 FYP Gantt-chart
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA 40450 Shah Alam,
Selangor, Malaysia

No Activity Sem 1 2

Mth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Wk 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32

1 Identify a proposed title x x

2 Submission of contract x

3 Literature review x x x x x x x x x x x

4 Plan of research design x x x

5 Finalise proposal x

6 Presentation of proposal

7 Submission of proposal

8 Assembly of apparatus x x x x

9 Run experiment and compile data x x x x

10 Analysis of data x x x x

11 Presentation of project x

12 Final draft of report (comb bound) x x

13 Submission of final report (hard bound)

SEKIAN TERIMA
KASIH