Grafting of maleic anhydride onto waste acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and its application for compatibilization of ABS blends

Incorporating recycled plastics into the manufacturing process is an essential way to establish a sustainable plastics economy. However, current processes are limited by the degradation of mechanical properties, high cost, and inconsistent product quality compared with their virgin counterparts. Here, we present an upcycling strategy for waste plastics where waste acrylonitrile‐butadiene‐styrene ( re ABS) is first grafted with maleic anhydride (MAH), then utilized to compatibilize nylon 6(PA6)/ABS and PA6/ABS/CaCO 3 blends. The re ABS‐ g ‐MAH exhibits improved Young's modulus and tensile strength, but lower strain at break and impact strength compared with re ABS. As an additive, re ABS‐ g ‐MAH effectively compatibilizes PA6/ABS and PA6/ABS/CaCO 3 blends, indicated by greatly decreased PA6 domain size, homogeneous dispersion of fillers, and narrowed glass transition temperature regions between PA6 and ABS. Adding only 5 wt% re ABS‐ g ‐MAH increases the Young's modulus, strain at break, and impact strength of PA6/ABS blends by 26%, 180%, and 110%, respectively, compared with uncompatibilized samples. Similarly, for PA6/ABS/CaCO 3 blends, the strain at break and impact strength increase by 370% and 150%, respectively, while the Young's modulus and tensile strength show increases of 5% and 10%. The results show that this strategy of using polar groups to functionalize waste plastics as compatibilizers may open numerous opportunities for upcycling waste plastics.