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additives feature | Natural fibres


company has held numerous discussions with partners on possible ways of overcoming the limitations with twin-screw extruders in such areas as compounding long and delicate fibres into the melt without signifi- cantly reducing their length. He says the company now has a third-generation prototype machine based on a grooved roller rotating inside a housing that provides very good elongational mixing. This can be varied according to the speed of rotation and the gap between the roller and the housing as well as the surface characteristics of the segmented barrel. Several years ago, the company was involved in the development of the Nexxus multi-channel disc melt


Faurecia makes move into compounding


Much of the interest in natural fibre-reinforced plastics comes from the automotive industry. At least one Tier One, Faurecia, has gone so far as to not only develop its own compounds, but even install its own com- pounding capacity. It opened its first compounding plant late last year in Méru, France, to


produce NAFILean (NAtural Fibre for Lean injected design), an injection moulding compound containing hemp reinforced polypropylene. NAFILean was developed by a consortium comprising Faurecia and other parties from academia and agriculture groups. Faurecia says NAFILean can be used for such parts as interior trim, covers and ducting. It is already using NAFILean to make interior door panels for Peugeot, and it is also selling the compound to third parties. Faurecia says that NAFILean parts can be up to 25% lighter than


standard injection moulding parts, and also show a 40% improvement in fit and finish. Faurecia regards NAFILean as an intermediate step toward a 100% bio-based material. It will soon roll out an injection material comprising a bio-based polybutylene succinate (PBS) reinforced with hemp. The company is working with partners in universities and the chemical industry in its BioMat project. In 2012, it signed an R&D agreement with Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation to finalize the development of an optimized PBS for automotive applications, in place of polypropylene. ❙ www.faurecia.com


20 COMPOUNDING WORLD | March 2014


pump invented by Dr Giuseppe Ponzielli at RCT in Italy, which was claimed to greatly simplify and improve the production of long fibre reinforced compounds and other materials. Its latest developments make use of its experience in that project. Like the Nexxus, the Extruder Experts equipment uses drag flow to provide efficient mixing without damaging the fibres. Yet another EU-sponsored project covering natural


fibre-based compounds, Ultrafibre, finished last year. Its aim was to develop industrially scalable processes to enable natural fibre growers to process their products into consistent, high quality fibres suitable for use in compounds. The two main techniques investigated were ultrason-


ics (to unbundle the fibres) and atmospheric plasma (to improve their adhesion to the polymer matrix). During the project, bench-top ultrasonic equipment was developed to produce a greater percentage of cleaner and refined elemental fibres. UK company InControl Ultrasonics designed and


Faurecia is involved in the BioMat project and has launched its own NAFILean hemp and PP compound


manufactured the ultrasonic fibre treatment unit. It allows for the treatment of several forms of natural fibres, which are used in different composite processing techniques. The development was done in close co-operation with research group Smithers Rapra and with technical input from compound producer Green- Gran and from ICMA San Giorgio. The project team concluded that ultrasound treated hemp/PP compounds could be an alternative to commercially available natural fibre composites made using untreated fibres and using maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) instead to improve the fibre/polymer interface. UK-based Ultrafibre project member MoveVirgo has injection moulded hemp reinforced PP skegs, which are fins for surfboards. The Ultrafibre report says that the environmental impact of the Ultrafibre hemp/PP composite skeg is markedly reduced compared with the traditional polyamide 66 skeg, and says that this will provide MoveVirgo with “a strongly marketable product from an environmental and economic point of view; the hemp/PP skeg was produced at a reduced cost.” Steve Wilkinson at MoveVirgo says the trial began


last August and will last a year, and results so far are promising. However, the commercial barriers to building an industrial ultrasonic plant are large. “It is likely that in this current economic climate that large government or EU capital grants will be needed to enable an industrial plant to be built,” the report said in its conclusion.


One major hemp producer, Hemp Technology in the UK, had been planning a major investment in the technology, but the company went into administration last


www.compoundingworld.com


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