Polyester Lab Report

Polyester is synthetic fiber which mainly derive organic chemical compound from coal, air, water and petroleum and have the ester linkage. According to How (2015), the chemical reaction between an acid and alcohol formed polyester where a combination of two or more molecules form large molecule whose the structure repeats throughout its length. Researched by Smith (n.d) mentioned that production of polyester is by the chemical reaction of ethylene glycol with either terephthalic acid or its methyl ester in the presence of antimony catalyst to produce initially the monomer and low molecular mass oligomers.
i. Starting from the acid: Direct esterification reaction.
Figure 2.2 shows that the reaction of ethane-1,2-diol with benzene-1,4-dicarboxylic

After that, it undergoes process transesterification where the dimethyl ester reacts with ethane-1,2-diol and cause ethane-1,2-diol exchanges for methanol.
Polymerization of the monomer.
Figure 2.4 represent the condensation reaction where the monomer undergoes polycondensation process with the elimination of ethane-1,2-diol. This process requires antimony (II) oxide which acts as the catalyst and conducted at high temperature and low pressure when the monomer and the polymer are molten. The ethane-1,2-diol is recycled. There are two type of polyester production; batch and continuous process. In a continuous process, the product can be fed directly into melt-spinning heads while on the other hand the removal of casting, chipping, blending and drying is a must in the batch processing.
Cement

According to Kumar, Dhane, and Priyadarshee (2015) fibers have three-dimensional reinforcement system which similar to root reinforcement where the fibers bind the soil particle together. Since soil usually good in compression but poor in tension, tensile element (fiber) that placed in the soil could help to improve the stability and control deformation of the soil (Kumar et. al., 2015). Strains in the soil mass generate strains and tensile loads in the reinforcement where its act to control the soil movement and thus give the soil additional strength. There are two type of fiber which are natural fiber and manmade fiber. Natural fiber consists of animal and plant fiber while manmade fiber consists of synthetic fiber and regenerated fibers. In this study, polyester fiber from waste tire product acts as the non-active additive while cement acts as the stabilizer which added to the peat soil sample to stabilized the