Composite materials based on UPE resin and coffee husks

In this work, two series of composite materials based on unsaturated polyester (UPE) resin and coffee husk powder were fabricated by a hot pressing method using methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP) as an initiator. The gel time of UPE resin is 32  2 min with 0.5 wt % of MEKP was determined according to ASTM D2471. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) reveals that the curing process should be post-cured.