LAUSR

Abstract Oleic acid was graft copolymerized onto barley husk (BH) using a redox initiator. Samples of natural and grafted BH were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction, thermal analysis, swelling (%) and moisture absorption (%). SEM analysis revealed that the surface of the BH became rough after grafting. Reaction time, temperature, amount of solvent, monomer concentration and initiator molar ratio were optimized using conventional as well as Taguchi L16 (orthogonal array) design to get maximum percentage graft yield. At optimized conditions, the maximum graft yield was 55.3% by conventional method, whereas it was 56.82% by Taguchi method. Analysis of variance revealed that the reaction temperature and reaction time were the most and the least influential factors, respectively. Swelling (%) and moisture absorption (%) decreased with the increase in percentage graft yield. Grafted BH showed more chemical and thermal resistance as compared to natural BH. Synthesized graft copolymers were used as reinforcing material in poly vinyl alcohol composite films and rendered higher mechanical properties.