Abstract:
The disposal of many rubbish materials affects the environment because they
persist for a long period of time on the earth without degrading. Among the
rubbish materials, medical gloves are the one that are disposed to the
environment daily from different health centers all over the world. This leads to
great environmental problems on soil, ground and surface water, plants, animals
and human beings. Emission of bad odour and luck of storing place are the other
problems of the disposed medical gloves into the landfills. The goal of this study
is to recycle these disposable gloves and manufacture a full composite end
product used for partition of shelves or different rooms.
In this investigation an attempt has been made to determine the recyclability of
medical gloves. The study was done by using molten gloves reinforced with jute
fabric, which impart better strength for the composite end product. Thermal
sterilization method at a temperature of 100°c was used for disinfecting the
medical gloves. After sterilization the gloves wear melted using metal pot and
composite was manufactured using hand layup technique. The manufactured
composites were tested to study the mechanical properties of the composite,
tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength and hardness.
The mean tensile strength of the composite (563.009, 664.7577Mpa), the mean
compression of composite (1.3, 2.47Mpa) and the mean bending strength (0.99,
1.35Mpa) were recorded for two and three jute fabric layer composite product
respectively.
The results indicated that the recycling of medical gloves under the use of
composite manufacturing gives very strong end product functional for the
partition purpose.