Basalt Powder Based Thermoset and Thermoplastic Composites for Lightweight Applications

The continuous raise of environmental issues by the polymer products has led to the use of eco-friendly basalt as a reinforcement for the composites fabrication. Basalt reinforcement has attractive qualities such as non-toxicity, ease of processing steps, economical, less harmful, and excellent thermal, and mechanical properties. Basalt loading into different polymer matrices is indeed a comparably novel concept that may offer some very intriguing views, which have not yet been fully explored. The ability of mineral fillers such as basalt powder to reduce the polymer portion in polymer goods by retaining their original characteristics hand out to the establishment of a pollution-free ecosystem and the stabilizing of ecological issues. In this context, the current research aims to manufacture and characterize thermoset (i.e., synthetic epoxy, bio-epoxy, unsaturated polyester, and vinyl ester) and thermoplastic (i.e., polylactic acid, bio-based polypropylene, and bio-based high density polyethylene) composites reinforced with the same weight content (i.e., 30