MATERIALS | BIO-BASED POLYMERS
and short-fibre reinforced compounds incor- porating the Finnish company’s ABMcomposite technology, based on bioresorbable glass fibres. The fibres were originally developed for medi- cal applications, but Arctic Biomaterials has since moved into technical applications as well. Tomi Kangas, Sales and Marketing Director at
Arctic Biomaterials, says ABMcomposite technology brings added-value properties to bio-based and/ or biodegradable polymers. In PBS compounds, mechanical properties such as impact resistance are comparable with PC or PC/ABS, while flexural strength is similar to glass reinforced polyamide. An HDT A of around 110o
C is obtainable. Depending on fibre content (from 20% up to
With increasing BioPBS content in a blend with PLA, the level of crystallinity increases rapidly after the addition rate rises above 20%, hitting 50%, before it virtually plateaus, hitting a maximum at an addition rate of 80%. Additionally, when using 60% of BioPBS and more, heat deflection temperature, HDT, sharply increases to almost 100°C
40%), compounds can achieve a flexural modulus of 3,845–7,250 MPa, notched and unnotched (Izod) impact strengths of 30–37 kJ/m2 respectively.
and 66–74 kJ/m2
PLA development Arctic Biomaterials’ first venture into bio-based compounds involved the use of PLA. It has suc- ceeded in creating compounds with HDTs of around 155°C and modulus of well over 10,000 MPa. Kangas says the company is involved in some 50 customer projects, some of them with major global brands. It now also makes compounds based on a range of different biopolymers, rein- forced and also unreinforced, and also containing other bio-based additives. Kangas says that, using its own chemical exper-
Adding 40-60% BioPBS improves flexibility in PLA blends
tise, the company has been able to develop a PLA- based blend with a bio-content of over 80% that has hinge properties better than any other biopoly- mer currently on the market. Its most recent suc- cess is the development of PLA-based compounds (also containing PBS) that can resist temperatures of around 100°C but which do not require parts to be crystallised by annealing either in the mould or afterwards to achieve this performance, enabling injection moulding with reduced cycle times. The Finnish company is on a steep expansion
Effect on impact strength of addition of BioPBS to PLA 52 INJECTION WORLD | March 2019
path. In Finland, it already has small-scale equip- ment for production of glass and compounds, including LFTs, as well as small polymer reactors. At the end of last year, it started up a large glass manufacturing plant in China, and in the third quarter of this year, it should also have a 30,000 tpa compounding line installed in the country. “We are still a small company, but our plan is to be one of the biggest suppliers of bio-based plas- tics solutions in the world,” says Kangas. Trinseo says that, as a result of its acquisition of Italian compounder API in 2017, it is solidifying
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