Application News
Application News PaperFoam Not exactly a bioplastic, but nonetheless an interesting biobased and biodegradable packaging, PaperFoam is a commercially attractive, environmentally friendly packaging material that is produced by an innovative company was established in 1998 in Barneveld, the Netherlands. One of the innovations nominated for the 2014 Food Valley Award is a lightweight, portable gift pack for champagne bottles made of PaperFoam. PaperFoam contains no oil-based ingredients whatsoever: the packaging is made of locally sourced renewable raw materials - mainly potato starch, natural fibre and water - and is fully home compostable. It has a carbon footprint that is smaller from start to finish than comparable packaging made from plastic or paper pulp. The packaging has 4-star biobased certification, is extremely lightweight and fully biodegradable. It is completely safe: even when incinerated, no harmful substances are produced. Bioplastics take off! On the occasion of the 25 th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall (in Berlin, Germany), the IfBB – Institute for bioplastics and biocomposites at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hanover, Germany manufactured 20,000 balloon clips from bioplastics for balloons made of natural rubber. Lichtgrenze (frontier of light) is the name of the installation that is reminiscent of the course of the Wall in Berlin. Over a distance of approximately 15 kilometers a light-wall of balloons disappeared into the sky on the evening of November 9 th . For the implementation of this symbolic idea some environmental aspects also had to be considered. For this reason, the project team asked the IfBB to develop a balloon clip from a bioplastic that would meet the technical and environmental requirements. 8,000 balloons alone on the day of reunification were carried in all directions by the wind and landed in many different locations. And that’s where they should eventually rot, which conventional balloons and clips would not do. At the IfBB a mould had been developed for the production of the clips, which was adapted to the processing properties of the PLA blend used. One special requirement for the pearlescent clip is that it must exhibit both a high strength and also elasticity so that the clips do not break when closing the balloon and no brittle fracture occurs. The biobased and biodegradable materials used for the clips and the balloons finally ensure that the wall that once separated East and West Berlin from each other, may disappear into the sky free of any concerns. MT These properties make the PaperFoam technology especially suited to the production of low-quantity, highquality packaging applications. The product is produced via an injection moulding process. Basically, the ingredients are mixed and then injected into a heated mould. The material is foamed by evaporating the water, after which the finished packaging is ejected. The process is thus able to produce accurate shapes that provide better product protection. The design freedom and colourability make the material an attractive choice to designers. Just recently PaperFoam was chosen to manufacture a packaging for the new wireless, noise cancelling over-ear headphones from Plantronics. The PaperFoam ‘mountain’ on which the headphones nestle, encased in a clear plastic frame, was developed in cooperation with Plantronics and PKG Packaging, one of PaperFoam’s sales partners located on the US west coast. PaperFoam is currently used to pack champagne, electronics, cosmetics, medical and dry-foods. The company received a Cradle-to-Cradle Quality Statement from EPEA in May 2014. KL www.paperfoam.com www.ifbb-hannover.de www.berlin.de/mauerfall2014/en/highlights/balloon-event 36 bioplastics MAGAZINE [06/14] Vol. 9
Application News New cellulose based exfoliator Image: DTR Medical PTT for healthcare applications DTR Medical (Swansea, UK), a leading manufacturer of single-use surgical instruments, has specified Sorona ® (partly biobased PTT Polytrimethylene terephthalate) for six components in its new Cervical Rotating Biopsy Punch. This grade is a 15 % glass filled grade of Sorona EP providing high strength and stiffness. Further attributes of Sorona useful in this application include resistance to gamma sterilisation and excellent dimensional stability. The Cervical Rotating Biopsy Punch is used to take a tissue sample from the patient for cell analysis by microscopy. The DuPont material, which is supplied with full regulatory compliance for use in healthcare applications and is produced according to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standards, is used in the handle and trigger mechanism to mould the rear hand left and right, front handle, connector pin, rotational controller and the rotational controller with chamfer. These parts are used to activate a spring, driving the inner rod which, assisted by the Sorona inserts, generates a clamping force to cut the tissue sample. The Cervical Biopsy Punch with Rotation from DTR Medical is designed for single-use, which eliminates cross contamination that occur when re-using hard-toclean instruments on patients undergoing cervical cancer biopsies and saves considerable time and cost incurred by sterilizing the equipment for re-use. According to Andrew Davidson, Managing Director at DTR Medical “The surface finish of the handle is fundamental for instrument quality, replacing stainless steel and for good grip in the clinical setting. The part must deliver durable mechanical performance in use throughout the five year shelf life and the benefit of renewably sourced material is an added advantage for a single-use manufacturer. We tested many polymers for these components, and the DuPont material was superior.” Glen Wells, General Manager at St Davids Assemblies added “Sorona EP from DuPont combines the benefits of renewability with processing and performance advantages. The material can be processed similarly to PBT and PET, offers very low shrinkage and warpage, enhanced surface finish, and scratch resistance in finished parts.” Sorona contains 20 % to 37 % renewable material made with a renewably sourced propanediol (bio-PDO) made from technical starch. MT Celluloscrub XLS exfoliator from Lessonia (Saint Thonan, France) is a 100 % renewable and biodegradable white scrub that provides the same high performance of polyethylene (PE) beads. Coming from wood pulp, Celluloscrub is derivated from cellulose acetate making it a real renewable and biodegradable resource for the personal care industry. It answers to the technical and economic needs of the manufacturers of body washes, hand & feet scrubs and bar soaps. After several months of works of development in laboratories, it’s now clear that Celluloscrub is the ultimate product that can easily replace polyethylene in cosmetics. The formulators that worked with it confirm that all its characteristics are similar in that of the PE. Furthermore, Celluloscrub does not interfere with the stability of the cosmetics which contain it. Lessonia works according to the cosmetic GMP rules (ISO 22716). The biodegradation of Celluloscrub is very easy in a wide variety of environments including soils, composts, and waste water treatment facilities. The STURM-test according to EN9439/DIN54900-3 showed biodegradation in aerobic environment of 50–87 % after 9 weeks. Even if not a packaging product, Lessonia confirms that the polymer used to make Celluloscrub meets the requirements of the well-known EN 13432 compostability standard. The biodegradation of the polymer in waste water treatment facilities, the environment where most of the product will end up, has been measured according to the standards ASTM D5210-92 and ISO 11734. These methods evaluate the anaerobic biodegradability of organic compounds in municipal sewage sludge. The determination of anaerobic degradability is based on the liberation of biogas using diluted digested sludge as the inoculums. The study demonstrated that after 3 weeks 60–70 % of the initial polymer is degraded. MT www.lessonia.com www.dupont.com bioplastics MAGAZINE [06/14] Vol. 9 37
