COMPOUNDS | LFTs
Feddem said its LFT compounding technology has been recently installed at Polyram USA’s Evansville site
Also in the automotive world, Tim Kneale, Vice
President at Polyplastics USA (part of Japan’s Daicel Corp), told Compounding World: “Our materials are used where low weight and high strength are required. One big application is automotive where our materials are used in parts behind and panels in automotive interiors, for example.” The company produces a wide range of LFT compounds based on engineering thermoplastic matrices, said Polyplastics’ National Development Manager Tushar Birje. “Our Plastron range contains PP, PA6, PA66, PA9T, PA12 and PAMXD6 which can be reinforced with a range of fibres including glass, carbon and cellulose,” he explained. Kneale stressed that his company is developing
Below: Speaker diaphragms are a non-automo- tive application area for LFTs
products that help automotive manufacturers as they drive for greener production. “Lower emis- sions are increasingly important,” he said. “We are examining the possibility of using a recycled PP with regenerated cellulose to further reduce the carbon footprint.” Fibres of cellulose are regenerated using a solvent method which produces little waste, said Birje. “Since it has nearly 10% lower density than glass fibre-reinforced PP resin, its greenhouse gas emissions are also even lower when compared in equal volumes,” he added. The company’s most recent LFT product launch,
Plastron RA627P, features cellulose reinforcement too. The automotive sector may be an important
market for long-fibre reinforced plastics, but the materials find uses in areas where high strength, and low weight are important. The high-fidelity music industry is one area where inertia often has to be minimised to improve performance. So long-fibre reinforced thermoplastics are frequently a good fit in applications such as speaker dia- phragms. Polyplastics said Plastron LFT RA627P grade
uses regenerated cellulose fibre reinforcement and at 30% addition this reduces the environmental footprint of the grade by 30% compared with a 30% glass-filled material. The new grade uses uninterrupted cellulose
fibres in a PP matrix. The fibres are all of the same length and oriented in the same direction. The spun recovered cellulose has high strength and elasticity. The grade has approximately the same flexural modulus as 30% short glass fibre-rein- forced PP compounds but is 10% lower in density and so its specific rigidity is higher than the equivalent 30% glass-filled PP, said the company. In addition, Polyplastics said RA627P has a low loss coefficient, which combines with its high specific rigidity to make it useful as the material for dia- phragms in audio systems. In extrusion technology, Feddem’s LFT com- pounding line concept has been updated recently and the company has supplied a second-genera- tion line to Polyram USA’s Evansville, Indiana site. Polyram said that the new Feddem FLF600 plant with 58 strands delivers the same production rate as its two conventional LFT lines running 120 strands at the 100,000 sq ft Evansville site. Sebastian Jost, Feddem’s Senior Technical
Expert, said: “The high performance of the line is based on the optimised strand run through the impregnation tool and the refined control of the production parameters.” There are also consider- able space savings compared to traditionally designed lines, he added.
CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: �
www.technocompound.com �
www.sabic.com �
www.polyplastics-global.com �
https://feddem.com/
52 COMPOUNDING WORLD | March 2025
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: POLYPLASTICS
IMAGE: FEDDEM
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