Acoustic Polymer Foams Give True Theatre Experience

To provide effective sound insulation for optimal acoustics in the oval-shaped Genexis Theatre (Fusionopolis, an R&D complex in Singapore), BASF’s flame-retardant specialty foam Basotect® has been used by the engineers. The Basotect panels, surrounded by black fleece, are fitted behind numerous timber beads spread across the heavily lined and curved theater walls.

Basotect, made from melamine resin, a thermoset polymer, is a good sound absorption material and minimize reverberations occurring inside the theatre. Its characteristic feature is its three-dimensional network structure consisting of slender and thus easily shaped webs. Basotect’s open-cell foam structure makes it lightweight (9g/l), thermally-insulating and sound-absorbing material. This unique structure also provides the much needed flexibility to the foam and can be used at up to 240°C without any deterioration in performance.

Indian southern cities turning to natural gas

According to a top official from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Bangalore will have CNG fuelling stations by 2012. Meanwhile, in Chennai the gaseous fuel will be available in the next three years thanks to a city gas distribution project, said Gail India Limited’s general manager R. Tiwari.

Chairman of Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) L. Mansingh said that infrastructure to supply compressed natural gas in Bangalore would be in place in two years. Moreover, there is a Petronet LNG’s project, expected to be commissioned by March 2012, to establish a Bangalore-Mangalore-Kochi pipeline. Once built, consumers will have the benefit of piped natural gas delivered in town.

On the other hand, Chennai would be on the CNG map after the City Gas Distribution (CDG) project is implemented in the next two to three years. According to Tiwari, the CDG would reduce the nation’s dependence on petrol by 31 per cent and help save $87 billion of foreign exchange flowing outside the country through oil imports.

During the first phase, the project would be implemented in 17 cities through a Gail subsidiary, with authorization from PNGRB, reported the Indian online newspaper Express. The CGD network would create green corridors for distributing and marketing of CNG as fuel for vehicles (inter city as well as intra city) and piped natural gas for domestic and industrial purposes.

Ticona's Ultra-High Heat Vectra® LCP Helps JST Corp. Solve Weld-Line, Cracking Issues in SD Connectors

JST Corp., a global manufacturer of interconnection products, has eliminated stress cracks in its injection molded Secure Digital (SD) connector thanks to the superior weld-line strength and higher heat deflection properties found in inherently flame resistant Vectra® liquid crystal polymer (LCP) from Ticona Engineering Polymers.

"With technical assistance from Ticona, JST was able to switch to Vectra S135 and start molding thin-wall parts with excellent process consistency and good surface appearance," said Miguel Padilla, JST Molding Supervisor at JST in Waukegan, Ill. "Now we have the extended operating temperature and flowability that allows us to consistently fill these complex geometries while, at the same time, maintaining tight tolerances and avoiding assembly process issues."

When molding with a 10 percent glass, 30 percent mineral reinforced LCP resin with a distortion temperature under load (DTUL) of 248 degrees Celsius (479 degrees Fahrenheit), JST had been experiencing weld-line issues and occasional cracks that developed during the assembly process. JST needed an engineering thermoplastic with a higher heat deflection temperature (HDT) profile that could withstand the particularly challenging dimensional considerations and withstand lead-free soldering demands of this SC connector application for handhelds such as bar code scanners.

JST turned to Ticona for material and processing technical assistance. During molding trials, Ticona demonstrated that JST could make the successful material switch to Vectra S135 and eliminate intermittent fill and bowing issues its molder was experiencing with SD connector parts molded with the other commercially available LCP.

"Ticona designed Vectra S135 to meet the needs of customers like JST ultra-high heat resistance, thinner walls and faster cycle time," said Edward Hallahan, Technical Marketing Manager Ticona High Performance Polymers. "By switching to Vectra S135, JST also was able to optimize their molding process to reduce cycle times by 4 seconds."

As a member of the high-temperature Vectra S series family, Vectra S135 significantly extends the possible processing window with a melting point of 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit). It is a 35 percent glass fiber reinforced LCP with very low outgassing and high stiffness designed for use in demanding connector and surface-mount applications, especially those that must meet Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS). A unique polymer structure allows S135 to achieve a high DTUL, and process stably at temperatures significantly lower than other high-DTUL LCPs. It offers:

• A DTUL of 335 degrees Celsius (635 degrees Fahrenheit)
• Improved weld-line strength
• Reduced viscosity, which allows it to fill walls as thin as 0.2 mm (0.008 in)

Vectra LCP is widely used by customers to make eco-friendly connectors, bobbins, switches and relays that meet RoHS and European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives. In addition, customers and original equipment manufacturers are striving to accelerate the production of green and safe products.

Teijin Sets 2012 as the Target to Launch its Bio-derived PET Fiber

Teijin Fibers Limited, the core company of the Teijin Group's polyester fibers business, announced that it will begin the full-fledged production and marketing of new plant-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber as the world's first commercially produced bio-derived PET fiber, in April 2012.

Named ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber, the new product, also available as a textile, will become Teijin Fibers' core biomaterial for applications ranging from apparel, car seats and interiors to personal hygiene products. Teijin Fibers expects to sell 30,000 tons of ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber products in the initial fiscal year ending in March 2013, and 70,000 tons by the third year of business.

ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber is made roughly 30% from biofuels derived from biomass such as sugarcane. Conventional PET typically is made by polymerizing ethylene glycol (EG) and dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) or telephthalic acid (PTA), with EG accounting for roughly 30%. The EG contained in ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber is bio-derived rather than oil-derived, so it helps to conserve fossil resources and lower greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber has the same characteristics and quality of oil-derived PET, so it is suitable for use in many polyester products.

ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber also can be recycled using Teijin Fibers' ECO CIRCLE closed-loop polyester recycling system. Polyester is chemically decomposed at the molecular level by the system and then recycled as new DMT that offers purity and quality comparable to material derived directly from petroleum.

Teijin Fibers develops unique polyester technologies through "hybrid strategies" that variously combine the company's special expertise in biomaterials, recycling, functional materials and manufacturing processes to reduce environmental loads.

Warwick University's New Technique Could Ease Recycling of Most Challenging Christmas Plastic Wrapping

On average we each consume 120 grams of plastic wrapping on Christmas gifts most of which is of a type which almost impossible to recycle. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have devised a new technique which could process 100% of Christmas and other household plastic instead of the tiny fraction that currently actually gets processed - typically only 12% of such waste is truly recycled often and the rest is often put into land fill or simply burnt as fuel.

Some plastic still goes straight to land fill but householders currently spend a great deal of effort separating out the rest of their plastic waste believing it will be recycled yet typically only 12% of "Municipal Plastic Solid Waste" is truly recycled.. It is often simply too time consuming to separate out and clean the various types of plastic of their persistent labels or other problems, as that requires significant laborious human intervention. An additional problem is that often objects are made of more than one plastic that would require different treatments.

However University of Warwick engineers have come up with a simple process that can cope with every piece of plastic waste and can even break some polymers such as polystyrene - back down to its original monomers (styrene in the case of polysterene).

The Warwick researchers have used support from AWM's Science City funding devised a unit which uses pyrolysis (using heat in the absence of oxygen to decompose of materials) in a "fluidized bed" reactor. Tests completed in the last week have shown that the researchers have been able to literally shovel in to such a reactor a wide range of mixed plastics which can then be reduced down to useful products many of which can then be retrieved by simple distillation.

The products the Warwick team have been able to reclaim from the plastic mix include: wax that that can be then used a lubricant; original monomers such as styrene that can be used to make new polystyrene; terephthalic acid which can be reused in PET plastic products, methylmetacrylate that can be used to make acrylic sheets, carbon which can be used as Carbon Black in paint pigments and tires, and even the char left at the end of some of the reactions can be sold to use as activated carbon at a value of at least £400 a ton.

This research could have a significant impact on the budgets of local authorities and produce considerable environmental benefits. The lab scale tests concluded this week have successfully produced distilled liquids and solids that can be taken away by the bucket load for processing into new products. The University of Warwick engineers are now working with the University's technology transfer arm, Warwick Ventures, who expect that their work will be of great interest to local authorities and waste disposal companies who could use the technology to create large scale reactor units at municipal tips which would produce tanker loads of reusable material.

The lead researcher on the project, University of Warwick Engineering Professor Jan Baeyens, said: "We envisage a typical large scale plant having an average capacity of 10,000 tons of plastic waste per year. In a year tankers would take away from each plant over £5 million worth of recycled chemicals and each plant would save £500,000 a year in land fill taxes alone. As the expected energy costs for each large plant would only be in the region of £50,000 a year the system will be commercially very attractive and give a rapid payback on capital and running costs."

FISIPE Gets Harper's State-of-the-Art Carbon Fiber Processing Line Installed

Harper International has installed a full pilot scale carbon fiber (CF) process line for FISIPE, S.A., one of the leaders in specialty acrylic fibers for technical applications. Additionally, Harper and FISIPE, S.A. have developed a collaborative agreement in which the pilot process line in Lavradio, Portugal is available as an open reference and capabilities demonstration to other select Harper clients.

Harper was chosen as the primary partner for engineering, process equipment, installation supervision and startup for a complete pilot scale CF line rated for production of carbon fibers from 24k to 320k from PAN based precursor. Harper's process equipment solution incorporates their proprietary multi-flow oxidation oven, advanced LT and HT slot furnaces rated for 800°C and 1800°C respectively, surface treatment and waste gas abatement systems, and winders.

"FISIPE partnered with Harper due to their background in carbon fiber process equipment," stated José Miguel Contreiras, Commercial Manager / Board Member, FISIPE, S.A. "Harper offered to us the most credible proposition and we are extremely confident that our collaborative agreement will be mutually beneficial."

During the installation phase, Harper deployed a field team consisting of a supervisor as well as ancillary engineering and manufacturing resources to support erection and start-up activities on site. Harper worked directly with the client's contractors and internal staff for field installation of electrical and mechanical interconnect.

"At Harper, we seek to partner collaboratively with clients as they develop, refine and scale up their process technologies," commented Charles Miller, Jr., President, Harper International. "Our depth of expertise and unique ability to create solutions enables firms like FISIPE to optimize their R&D investments and achieve their goals more swiftly and successfully."

Braskem GP Recycling Campaign Makes São Paulo Greener by Collecting Over 13.5 Tons of Plastic Waste

Proving that small gestures can be transformed into great acts, the Braskem GP Recycling Campaign succeeded in its goal of encouraging São Paulo citizens to dispose of their plastic waste at special collection points.

Conducted last month in five parks in different regions of the city during the three-day-long Brazilian leg of the Formula 1 championship, the campaign collected a total of 13.5 tons of plastic waste.

In return for this positive gesture of citizenship and respect for the environment, the city of São Paulo will receive 500 items of urban furniture, including benches, flower beds and garbage cans. Plásticos Suzuki will be responsible for manufacturing the recycled plastic benches that will be donated by Braskem to the São Paulo Municipal Government on the city's anniversary, on January 25.

A partnership between Braskem, the São Paulo Municipal Government and Plastivida, the campaign also involved five cooperatives, which sorted the material collected and weighed the plastic waste: Cooperativa da Capela do Socorro, Corpore Centro, União de Itaquera, Central do Tietê and Coperviva Bem, each of which responsible for the garbage collected in their respective region. Coopercaps, another cooperative, was responsible for collecting the waste disposed of at the Interlagos Formula 1 track.

Formula 1 GP - The Braskem GP Recycling campaign, featuring Emerson Fittipaldi as spokesperson, received widespread publicity during the Brazilian leg of the Formula 1 championship, during which Braskem and Plásticos Suzuki demonstrated a mini recycling plant. According to João Gomes, Braskem's Marketing Officer, "It was a fun way of showing how items of furniture can be made from recycled plastic."

Twelve tons of plastic waste was collected at the track alone. "The combined results of the Interlagos and the park operations exceeded our expectations. In addition to collecting 43% more plastic waste than we had anticipated, the campaign had an impact on a significant number of people, which pleased us enormously," Gomes concluded.