Demand for biodegradable materials is growing fast, spurred on by environmental concerns, with industrial manufacturers developing high-performance bio-sourced and/or biodegradable materials to respond to this trend. Twin-screw technology is ideally suited to process environmentally friendly compounds that comply with the highest Sustainable Development standards.
Clextral has developed innovative systems to produce a wide range of fully biodegradable bio-sourced and composite compounds, using organic raw materials such as natural fibers and starches.
Practical information
Biodegradability is a relatively complex concept and process. It may be defined as the intrinsic capacity of a material to be decomposed by bacterial and micro-organic agents, for conversion into H2O, CO2 and/or CH4 to produce a new biomass medium.
Biodegradable materials are divided into three major categories:
- Natural materials, which include biopolymers and polymer compounds derived directly from plant resources, such as starches, cellulose, lignin, etc.
- Bacterial polymers, including PHB, and PHBV
- Polymers synthesized from monomers derived from plant resources, such as PLA
- Fossil-sourced materials, such as polyesters
- Composite materials, which combine polymers of the two previous categories
Clextral twin-screw process features
Clextral twin-screw lines offer major advantages to process biodegradable compounds:
- Optimum product quality and process flexibility
- Dedicated screw profiles, ensuring mixing quality
- Continuous processing of chemical reactions, mixing and blending
- Combined micro-mixing and macro-mixing functions
- Controlled melting, degassing, cooling and forming
- High torque levels for efficient shearing and homogeneous mixing
- Easy access to screws, reduced down time between batches and simplifying changeover
Clextral also offers its expertise and in-house facilities to enable industrial manufacturers and research centers to develop and test new biodegradable compounds and to improve processing. Designing new compounds, prototyping, pre-industrial trials and scaling up can all be carried out confidentially in our facilities, with or without the participation of our experts. Recent product innovations include the development of starch-based loose-fill packing materials and biodegradable films.
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