The most popular biodegradable plastics are expect

Biodegradable plastics are expected to replace traditional polymer materials

due to the continuous enhancement of public awareness of environmental protection, the application of plants as the source material for making famous wolf's law points out that the material for making plastic resins is heating up. Not long ago, Italy's goop company announced that it has used the natural work brand plant-based polymer materials produced by gargill Dow company to process a series of disposable plastic tableware. This shows that people have made more and more progress and achievements in using plants as raw materials to manufacture plastic resins. When some people still have doubts about whether disposable plastic tableware can really achieve environmental protection performance, Italians have confirmed with action that more and more attention has been paid to the sustainable supply capacity of raw materials. For some common renewable resources, such as grain, fabric, wood, sugar cane, sugar beet, etc., turning these raw materials into polymers is an ideal solution to resource regeneration. It is true that using natural materials to make polymer materials is not a new technology. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, people used pulp to produce Celluloid film, namely cellophane, but the raw materials used to make this kind of celluloid cannot be artificially synthesized. At least the latest German DIN standards and American ASTM standards will not include it in the list of synthetic materials

unlike the electronic UTM experimental machine used in static testing, there is a strong awareness of environmental protection in the market, especially in the packaging market, so whether the raw materials are synthetic is the key requirement. It is generally believed that non synthetic materials are more in line with the requirements of environmental protection standards The film department of UCB surface special treatment company has been sold to a private consortium in July, 2005. The Department claims that the natureflex brand series products they produce are fully biodegradable cellulose films. This cellulose film has high transparency in natural conditions, but does not have moisture-proof or heat sealing properties. After coating and painting, this film can overcome these shortcomings, However, the biodegradability of the film will be affected. Andysweetman, the marketing manager of special packaging materials of UCB company, said that natureflex series products adopt a fully synthetic polymer coating, which is the only biodegradable material of our company. In the packaging material market dominated by plastic film, cellulose materials have rapidly given way to traditional polymer materials, especially oriented PP materials, in recent years. Sweetman believes that now is the best time to launch degradable films. He estimated that the current annual demand for cellulose film in the global market was slightly more than 100000 tons, while the corresponding demand for BOPP in the packaging market was more than 3million tons. However, since the company launched biodegradable natureflex products, we can enter new application fields to replace traditional polymer materials

at present, the single product with the largest consumption is used to manufacture transparent adhesive to replace cellophane, and then it will replace various transparent films that currently occupy the mainstream, such as co extruded PP, coated PP, polyester PP, etc. Natureflex film has a non coating type and three different coating layers. The coated film products have moisture-proof, air tight and good heat sealing performance. For all polymers from nature, one of its important end-user markets is organic fruit packaging and vegetable packaging, but sweet man said that even in this application field, they are not only concerned about the profitability of products. "Generally, the organic packaging material market is a very loose market. Pure natural products use pure natural packaging materials. We are not only successful in areas where we have market and technical advantages, because end users are very demanding on products, and they are very concerned about even a slight lack of product performance." Sweetman thinks so. Sweetman said, "we must maintain a balance between expanding the market and developing technology, but at present, the cost is the only factor to be considered. The cost of using renewable resources to make plastics is higher than that of using traditional polymer plastics. When used in food packaging, biological plastics cannot be well moisture-proof and sealed. Using this packaging material in some applications may have an adverse impact on the preservation of packaged products." Improving the moisture resistance and tightness of bioplastics is a technical problem, but Sweetman believes that this major technical problem - if moisture resistance can affect the invasion of microorganisms, the material will not be degraded. It will face severe challenges to sell high-cost packaging materials that are not particularly attractive in technology to major users. However, as long as the enterprises engaged in the manufacture of biodegradable materials by dismantling the chemical giant are cooperating with each other rather than competing with each other, this challenge will become less severe

we are beginning to understand the fact that if any of us make progress, it will change the whole packaging industry. He believes that customers can decide for themselves that starch based materials are suitable for plates, while cellulose materials with moisture resistance and high light transmittance are more suitable for packaging materials. Although companies such as gargilldow and novamont have invested a lot of energy in the research of cellulose material processing and molding, the technological progress of cellulose materials in the application of extrusion molding, injection molding or thermoforming processes is not great. In terms of capacity scale and market performance, gargilldow has always been regarded as the leader of new biodegradable materials. The company's plant in Nebraska, the United States, has an annual capacity of 140000 tons of polylactic acid (PLA) polymer. The CEO of the company said that if the process is further optimized, the capacity can be higher

the manufacturing process of PLA polymer no longer requires complex biochemical technology. The corn raw materials are crushed and separated into starch, which is refined into glucose, then converted into lactic acid, and lactic acid is concentrated into shrunk lactic acid intermediate monomer. Finally, the polymer is prepared through a solvent-free process

source: China Chemical Industry News