LIGHTWEIGHT WALL PANEL BY USING PLASTIC BOTTLES

Abstract

More than 480 billion and one million plastic bottles are sold every year and every minute respectively around the world. According to Eriksen et al. (2014), the world produced more than 350 million tonnes of plastic waste annually although plastic bottles take 450 years to decompose. Hence, to reduce the waste in landfills, this project will recycle the plastic bottles to produce lightweight wall panel by adding polyurethane (PU200) foam in order to strengthen and reducing the density of the wall panel compared to the standard density of brick or conventional wall panel which are from 1900 to 2100 kg/m3. Therefore, this project is conducted to determine the density and the compressive strength of the lightweight wall panel by carrying out few tests using the end product with compression test. This study discovered that the density of lightweight wall panel by using recycled plastic bottles and PU200 foam is lighter than conventional wall panel which is 1510 kg/m3 for 28 days of curing. Furthermore, the compressive strength of this lightweight wall panel is 9.1 Mpa for 28 days curing which is passing the minimum of brick wall panel 3.5 Mpa. In brief the project shows that the lightweight is more preferable than conventional wall panel in addition to conserve the environment world wide. Future studies are recommended to find a large compression test machine for the purpose of more accurate data.