Promising Natural Organic Rosin Based Composites Fabricated at Stove Top Temperature

Rosin is a naturally available organic material obtained especially from pine trees. It finds many usages and applications in areas like soldering, pharmaceuticals, building work, engineering field etc. In this work, an attempt has been made to study experimentally the improvement in strength of rosin at normal stove top temperature by means of combining rosin in various ratios with some important organic hardeners and chemicals of literature importance. A table top book press was fabricated for the purpose of rosin pressing using simple tools like teak wood, bolt and nuts. Experiments were conducted using commonly used kitchen gas stove, fabricated book press, rosin raw material, aluminium sulfate powder, maleic anhydride chemical, acetone, ethanol and saw dust particles for making different combination materials using rosin as the main element. Results showed that, rosin on its own without additives showed higher viscosity and brittleness. When combined with organic hardener aluminium sulfate, rosin produced an improved material with reduced brittleness, good hardness and good energy absorption. And by combining with maleic anhydride chemical, rosin produced a hard monomer with an improvement in energy absorption with better future scopes. Comparatively better material was obtained using saw dust particle reinforced rosin and chemical hardener combination. Improvement in characteristics like viscosity and energy absorbed were observed using experiments at three different temperatures. With this improvements, rosin promises to be a possible future material or material additive like filler in composites with regard to anti-plastic materials or plastic alternatives.