International Journal of Technology and Engineering Studies volume 4 issue 1 pp. 1-6 doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.20469/ijtes.4.10001-1 Investigation of Clothes Recycling as Colouring Agent for Polypropylene-Nanoclay Nanocomposites Mohd Hilmi Othman ∗ Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Malaysia Arif Izzudin Muhammad Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Malaysia Sulaiman Hassan Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Malaysia Abstract: Most of polymers can be recycled and reused to make new products or new inventions. Basically, some of the clothes were made up from polymer and it can be recycled as a compound or filler material in the process of injection moulding. The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential of recycling used clothes made from polyester, as a colouring agent for plastic product through the injection moulding process. This research started with shredding the used clothes into a powder and mixing the clothes powder with Polypropylene-Nanoclay Nanocom- posites (PPNC). The samples were produced in three different colours which were red, blue, and yellow according to the colour of the recycled cloth. All samples produced from this process went to several testing, such as tensile, warpage, shrinkage, and thermal analysis. According to the results, each of the samples produced the same colour as the used clothes which were red, blue, and yellow. Besides that, the highest value of Youngs Modulus for sample of used clothes was 525 MPa, which was better than the samples of unused clothes. The quality of the samples was better when the values of warpage and shrinkage were acceptable, which were in the range of 0.01 mm to 0.048 mm for warpage and 0.0141% to 0.0156% of shrinkage. Based on the thermal analysis, the peak temperature was 167.2 ◦ C which is not far different from pristine polypropylene. The outcome of this research should be beneficial in the future of plastic manufacturing process, in terms reducing cost of raw material and, at the same time, the environmental pollution impact also can be reduced. Keywords: Injection moulding, clothes recycling, polypropylene nanoclay, colouring agent Received: 03 September 2017; Accepted: 03 December 2017; Published: 12 February 2018 I. INTRODUCTION The objective of this research was to explore the us- age of recycled cloth as a colouring agent for the in- jection moulding process. This experiment was con- ducted by using several colours of recycled cloth/fabric made from polyester, which were red, yellow, and blue in order to produce variations of colour in the sample. These recycled clothes then had been compounded with polypropylene nanoclay, and then the compound was in- jected mould to prepare the test samples. Several tests were conducted to this sample in order to find the prop- erties and quality of the injected mould samples. The expectation for this research is to prove that the cloth can be a good colouring agent in the injection moulding process. ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mohd Hilmi Othman, Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineer- ing, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Malaysia. E-mail: hilmi@uthm.edu.my c ⃝ 2018 KKG Publications. All rights reserved.