BIOPLASTICS | MATERIALS
Natural growth: latest
innovations in bioplastics Bioplastics production is keeping pace with that of petroleum- based materials – and will continue to find use in everything from food packaging to agricultural film. Lou Reade reports
As long as bio-based plastics can compete with their ‘conventional’ equivalents, they will find more and more use in industries such as food packaging. Sometimes, they can be used to overcome
shortcomings in conventional designs – such as the difficulty of recycling multi-layer films. Four bioplas- tics specialists have teamed up to develop a range of transparent, multi-layer bio-based films. The partners – Sukano, Nippon Gohsei,
NatureWorks and Eurotech Extrusion Machinery – say the project will allow packaging manufactur- ers to produce easily recyclable co-extruded film for applications such as dry food packaging. The coex film, processed at Eurotech, used a K5A five-layer blown film lab machine in a configuration using two extruders (each 25mm screw diameter), and three extruders of 20mm diameter – plus a die lip of 100mm diameter and die gap of 1.4mm.
www.filmandsheet.com The film, which is 45 microns thick and 280mm
wide, uses Ingeo PLA 4043D from NatureWorks for the inner A layer, with an outer bubble layer E including Sukano masterbatches with processing aids. The PLA-based masterbatches were specifi- cally designed for this application. The tie layers use BTR8002P and the barrier layer uses G-poly- mer – both from Nippon Gohsei. This combination of formulation and process conditions yielded a stable bubble, excellent film transparency, and good roll quality, said the partners. The barrier layer, which Nippon Gohsei describes as the first extrudable high barrier amorphous vinyl acohol resin, offered high gas and aroma barrier and transparency, while supporting compostability and recyclability properties of the final film. It can replace Alu-foil in many packaging applications. The partners said that the bio-based barrier film
Main image: The Biovege research project has developed a range of biodegradable films and nets from agricul- tural waste products
July/August 2018 | FILM & SHEET EXTRUSION 13
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