Blending tunes stiffness of biodegradable resins. (Keeping up with Extrusion).Bixby International, a specialized sheet processor in Newburyport, Mass., sought a wider range of stiffness than was offered by the handful of available biodegradable biodegradable /bio·de·grad·a·ble/ (-de-grad´ah-b'l) susceptible of degradation by biological processes, as by bacterial or other enzymatic action. bi·o·de·grad·a·ble adj. polyester resins. Biomax resins from DuPont Packaging and Industrial Polymers, Wilmington, Del., are somewhat stiff. Eastar Bio grades from Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, Tenn., are very flexible--similar to LDPE LDPE abbr. low-density polyethylene . So Bixby embarked on more than six months of alloying, extruding, and testing. Results of those trials were presented this month at the SPE SPE - Software Practice and Experience ANTEC meeting in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden . Bixby's solution was to blend Biomax with Eastar in various combinations, together with another ingredient, CAPA CAPA California Alternate Performance Assessment CAPA Captaris, Inc (stock symbol) CAPA Confederation of Asian and Pacific Accountants CAPA Creative and Performing Arts (school) polycaprolactone from Solvay Interox Inc., Houston, which is a biodegradable toughening agent. Blends reportedly can be tailored to any desired stiffness and extruded like conventional polyolefins into sheet 5 to 100 mils thick. The sheet can also be foamed. Bixby (978) 462-4100, www.bixbyintl.com; DuPont (800) 438-7225, www.dupont.com/packaging; Eastman (800) EASTMAN, www.eastman.com; Solvay (713) 525-6500, www.solvaycaprolactones.com |
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