2.1. Raw material
Potato chips industry waste was obtained from the Kar Chips Factory
in Turkey. As reasoned waste was dried in air and then ground in a rotary
cutting mill to obtain a grain size lower than 2 mm. After milling, biomass
sample was screened to obtain seven different particle sizes (Dp),
namely 1.8>Dp>1.25 mm; 1.25>Dp>0.85 mm; 0.85>Dp>0.6 mm;
0.6bDpb0.425 mm; 0.425bDpb0.224 mm. Average particle size range
was found to be as 0.81 mm. Pure and waste High Density Polyethylene
(HDPE) were brought from a petrochemical company (PETKİM Aliağa,
Turkey) and Nur Plastic Factory (Eskişehir, Turkey), respectively.
Proximate analysis was performed on the samples to determine
the weight fractions of volatile, ash and fixed carbon contents. The ultimate
analysis was performed in an elemental analyzer (Carlo Erba,
EA 1108). The results are given in Table 1.
Thermo Gravimetric Analysis (TGA) was applied by using Linseis
Thermowaage L 81 thermo gravimetric analyzer coupled with Differential
Thermal Analyzer (DTA) to evaluate the thermal behavior of potato
skin and HDPE. Conditions were applied working with 25 mg sample,
100 mL min−1 nitrogen flow with 10 °C min−1 heating rate. The TG
and DTG curves for potato skin and HDPE recorded from room temperature
to 900 °C are shown in Fig. 1.