ADDITIVES | NANOCOMPOSITES
IMAGE: VERSARIEN/FLUX FOOTWEAR
compressive strength, tensile strength, barrier properties, rheological enhancement and flow characteristics.
Above: Flux Footwear plans to launch a version of its Adept shoe with a sole reinforced with Versarien’s graphene
ed to launch before the end of this year. With their focus on weight and material saving,
many graphene polymer composite applications can be considered to meet sustainability aspirations. Universal Matter aims to take sustainability even further through the development of its Flash Joule Heating technology, which is claimed to provide a cleaner, faster and more economical graphene production route using sustainable feedstocks such as biomass and recycled polymers. In August it entered into a three-year agreement with the US-based ChemQuest Technology Institute to further grow and validate the technology. Universal Matter produces its graphene using
rapid, flash-fired bursts of electrical energy. This enables bonding of carbon into a few layers of turbostratic graphene, where the individual layers are less aligned than the regular AB-stacked arrangement. The company claims the turbostratic structure provides performance benefits in terms of
Nanotube progress While graphene may be making the bigger headlines today, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) certainly should not be overlooked and considerable progress has been made with one of the biggest challenges to exploiting their full potential to date – dispersion. Like graphene, carbon nanotubes offer considerable benefits — including electrical and thermal conductivity — at low addition levels but optimum disentanglement and dispersion is a key element in reaching optimal performance, according to multiwall (MW) CNT producer Nanocyl.
Marking its 20th anniversary this year, Belgium-
based Nanocyl has a production capacity of 400 tonnes/yr for its NC7000 MWCNT products and can produce up to 3,500 tonnes/yr of its PlastiCyl MWCNT-based compounds and masterbatches. NC7000 products are REACH registered in the EU and the company has an SNUR (Significant New Use Rule) in place in the US. The company says its products are affordable for industrial applications. Speaking at the Compounding World Congress
in Cologne in Germany in June this year, Nanocyl’s Technical Sales Manager Americas Dr Alicia Rul presented some of the company’s latest work comparing dispersion results achieved through direct compounding of its bulk MWCNTs against the use of pre-dispersed masterbatches. The work looked at direct compounding of 3wt% of NC7000
Toyoda Gosei moves ahead with nano- cellulose PP in transit containers
Japanese automotive components group Toyoda Gosei has started using lightweight transit containers produced in a cellulose nanofibre (CNF) reinforced PP compound. The containers are produced using PP recycled from end-of-life containers compounded with 20% CNF. The new containers are 6% lighter than the originals, which the company says results in a similar lifecycle carbon emission reduction. The compound comes out of Toyoda Gosei’s work to develop a CNF-reinforced plastic for use in automotive interior and exterior components. It says it has been able to overcome CNF’s reduced impact performance through modified formulation and compounding. The company it is working with CNF material manufacturers
to try to reduce the cost of the materials. �
www.toyoda-gosei.com
20 COMPOUNDING WORLD | October 2022
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: TOYODA GOSEI
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