Covestro Expands Circular PC Availability in the U.S. After Gaining ISCC+ Certification

Covestro’s Newark, Ohio, polycarbonate compounding facility has achieved ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification) PLUS certification, increasing availability of the company’s mass balanced polycarbonate products in the U.S.

This achievement comes on the heels of the certification of #Covestro’s Baytown, Texas, facility earlier this year and marks a major step forward in the path towards circularity for polycarbonates in the U.S.

Contain up to 89% Attributed Bio-circular Raw Materials:

Makrolon® polycarbonate, which is compounded at Covestro’s Newark facility, is a high-grade plastic used in the automotive, electronics

and healthcare industries, among others. With its ISCC PLUS certification, the site will now be able to manufacture Makrolon® RE grades, which are renewable attributed products. RE grades are produced using existing infrastructure, can contain up to 89% attributed bio-circular raw materials and have the same physical characteristics of conventional Makrolon® #polycarbonate. #Makrolon® RE grades are part of Covestro’s broader CQ (circular intelligence) portfolio of products, and the ISCC PLUS certification expands the company’s circular offerings available in the United States.

“This ISCC PLUS accreditation is an important milestone that offers added value to our customers and key industries,” said Samir Hifri, chairman and president of Covestro LLC. “Covestro’s polycarbonate production in the U.S. is now more sustainable – from sourcing and production in Baytown to compounding the polycarbonate in Newark. Our Makrolon® RE series is a preferred option for customers looking for solutions to reach climate goals.”

Covestro’s Newark, Ohio, site is the company’s premier polycarbonate compounding facility in North America and one of six Color Competence and Design Centers globally. The facility, which is home to approximately 150 employees, produces polycarbonate and polycarbonate blends and offers technical expertise in color matching and design.

Learn all about polycarbonate (PC), a high-performance tough, amorphous, and transparent thermoplastic polymer.

“Our team in Newark understands the ambitious circularity targets set by Covestro globally,” said Rich Rogers, Newark site manager. “Our employees recognize that we have a key role to play in making our products and production more sustainable. We are excited to contribute to the efforts in advancing Covestro’s circularity journey.”

ISCC PLUS-certified polycarbonates from Covestro’s Newark facility will be produced using a mass-balance approach in the existing #production infrastructure, ultimately reducing the carbon footprint of the final product. Covestro could begin supplying select ISCC PLUS-certified products from its Newark facility in 2024.

Source: Covestro/omnexus-specialchem

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share: polymer melt shear viscosity.

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Some people have an over simplistic perception of polymer melt shear viscosity.

In a start-up flow, where you suddenly go from rest to a constant shear-rate (we do that every time when we fill a mold and the screw goes from rest to the prescribed velocity !), the polymer is initially fully entangled and unoriented.

As flow starts, within a time comparable to the polymer relaxation time (usually a fraction of a second for a molding grade), you reach a new equilibrium state with less entanglements and more orientation.

This lower entanglement state comes with a lower viscosity.

So, although our polymer is not "thixotropic", the viscosity is always a bit time dependent.

This is why in a capillary rheometer, we need a few seconds to get a stable reading after changing piston speed, by the way.

This excess viscosity at start-up means that your molding machine will feel this higher resistance to flow when the screw starts moving. In a hydraulic machine, the hydraulic system will supply more pressure for the screw to fight this and to reach its velocity target.

And the machine pressure reading would then invariably be higher than what you might attempt to predict with Flow Analysis, which typically doesn't cope with this "transient rheology effect".

Source:Vito leo

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#polymers #rheology #injectionmolding #polymerscience

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share: New resin systems from Sugar cane :

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:

New resin systems from Sugar cane :

Last week, we pultruded a brand new resin that will be a much safer option to replace phenolic resins. Crestafire P1-8001 made beautiful test parts. What makes this resin so unique and special is that it takes tremendous amounts of energy to get it to burn without any halogens, no antimony and no FR fillers! If you do get this resin to burn, you end up with sugar, not the toxic brew of by products from phenolic and other resins…

You see Crestafire P1-8100 is derived from sugar cane! Another example of how Scott Bader is looking to make the world a better place. This resin is also available in vacuum infusionable grade.

We are hoping the testing will be complete by Q1 2024 and we will be bringing this exciting new resin to the market.

Mark Kralik and Nicolas Nourry along with the Pulflex team, all did an amazing job!

Source:Jeffrey Starcher-Scott Bader

#scottbader #biobasedresin #flameretardant

Microbes could help reduce the need for chemical fertilizers

New coating protects nitrogen-fixing bacteria from heat and humidity, which could allow them to be deployed for large-scale agricultural use.

Production of chemical fertilizers accounts for about 1.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. MIT chemists hope to help reduce that carbon footprint by replacing some chemical fertilizer with a more sustainable source bacteria.

Bacteria that can convert nitrogen gas to ammonia could not only provide nutrients that plants need, but also help regenerate soil and protect plants from pests. However, these bacteria are sensitive to heat and humidity, so it’s difficult to scale up their manufacture and ship them to farms.

To overcome that obstacle, MIT chemical engineers have devised a metal-organic coating that protects bacterial cells from damage without impeding their growth or function. In a new study, they found that these coated bacteria improved the germination rate of a variety of seeds, including vegetables such as corn and bok choy.

This coating could make it much easier for farmers to deploy microbes as fertilizers.“We can protect them from the drying process, which would allow us to distribute them much more easily and with less cost because they’re a dried powder instead of in liquid,” she says. “They can also withstand heat up to 132 degrees Fahrenheit, which means that you wouldn’t have to use cold storage for these microbes.”

Protecting microbes

Chemical fertilizers are manufactured using an energy-intensive process known as Haber-Bosch, which uses extremely high pressures to combine nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to make ammonia.

In addition to the significant carbon footprint of this process, another drawback to chemical fertilizers is that long-term use eventually depletes the nutrients in the soil. To help restore soil, some farmers have turned to “regenerative agriculture,” which uses a variety of strategies, including crop rotation and composting, to keep soil healthy. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which convert nitrogen gas to ammonia, can aid in this approach.

Some farmers have already begun deploying these “microbial fertilizers,” growing them in large onsite fermenters before applying them to the soil. However, this is cost-prohibitive for many farmers.

Shipping these bacteria to rural areas is not currently a viable option, because they are susceptible to heat damage. The microbes are also too delicate to survive the freeze-drying process that would make them easier to transport.

To protect the microbes from both heat and freeze-drying, Furst decided to apply a coating called a metal-phenol network (MPN), which she has previously developed to encapsulate microbes for other uses, such as protecting therapeutic bacteria delivered to the digestive tract.

The coatings contain two components — a metal and an organic compound called a polyphenol — that can self-assemble into a protective shell.

Source:MIT News

New Project to Develop PHA Packaging Solutions Derived from Beer Production Residues

The BioSupPack project has recently started a new project year aiming to develop packaging solutions based on #polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) derived from beer production residues and demonstrating a feasible recycling process for these #biobasedplastics to ensure that resources remain in circulation.

Bringing together 17 partners from 8 countries, #BioSupPack receives funding from the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) and Horizon 2020 framework.

Enzymatic Recycling for PHA-based Packaging Solutions:

Coordinated by AIMPLAS and with a budget of EUR 8.8 million, BioSupPack is developing a demonstration process for the production and #enzymaticrecycling of environmentally safe, superior and versatile rigid #packagingsolutions based on the new #PHA family of biobased polymers. The main goal of BioSupPack is to deliver novel, cost-competitive and versatile bio-based packaging solutions based on PHA, for the packaging of #food, cosmetics, homecare and #beverage products as well as no environmental damage during and after their use.

On 26 September, the BioSupPack 28th month meeting was held at the AIMPLAS facilities in Valencia (Spain). Partners presented last results, exchanged ideas and met to discuss future project activities for the improvement of the circular bioeconomy in the EU.

The Bioeconomy Strategy and its Action Plan pave the way to a more innovative, resource-efficient and competitive EU society, to accelerate the deployment of a sustainable EU #bioeconomy so as to maximize its contribution towards the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the Paris Agreement, and the EU policy priorities as Policy Strategy, as the #CircularEconomy Action Plan and the Communication on Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation.

Demonstrating the Upcycling of PIR Waste within Production Process:

In several interlinked working groups, the project consortium partners will obtain PHAs from brewer’s spent grain and other monomers from enzymatic recycling of PHA packaging waste. Based on these PHA compounds, several #rigidpackaging prototypes with tailored barrier properties will be designed at a pilot scale and tailored towards the feasible waste collection and separation options. The packaging solutions will include #injectionmolded PHA and #biocomposites demonstrators as well as well as PHA-coated fiber-based service packaging and ready meal trays.

Eventually, the project partners will develop an enzymatic recycling process for recovering the PHA from these new packaging solutions – while the paperboard fraction can be repulped –, demonstrating the feasibility of upcycling post-industrial waste within the production process. The prototypes will be assessed regarding their environmental and socio-economic sustainability and the safety of the new bio-based packaging.

Source: AIMPLAS/Specialchem

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share: Runaway Polymerisation

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:

Runaway Polymerisation

Polymerisation is a chemical reaction, or process in which a monomer or a mixture of monomers is converted into a polymer such as polystyrene. Styrene polymerises slowly at normal ambient temperatures but very rapidly at elevated temperatures. It can be accelerated by heat, the lack of dissolved oxygen, the lack of a polymerisation inhibitor, and when contaminated by oxidising agents and most halides.

The polymerisation process is exothermic and, if the resulting heat is not removed, the bulk styrene temperature may rise to a level at which polymerisation is self-sustaining and very rapid. This is referred to as ‘runaway polymerisation’ and will usually be initiated by temperatures above 65°C. During a runaway polymerisation, the cargo will expand causing pressure to increase to the point

that vapour is released from tank vents or p/v valves. In some cases, the resulting build-up of pressure is sufficient to rupture the tank.

Case Study

On 28 September 2019, a cargo tank containing styrene monomer on board the Cayman Islands registered chemical tanker Stolt Groenland ruptured causing an explosion and fire. The ignition of the styrene monomer vapour resulted in a fireball. The rupture of the styrene monomer tank resulted from a runaway polymerisation that was initiated by elevated temperatures caused by heat transfer from other chemical cargoes.

The elevated temperatures caused the inhibitor, added to prevent the chemical’s polymerisation during the voyage, to deplete more rapidly than expected. Although the styrene monomer had not been stowed directly adjacent to heated cargo, the potential for heat transfer through intermediate tanks was not fully appreciated or assessed.

The tanker’s crew did not monitor the temperature of the styrene monomer during the voyage, and therefore were not aware of the increasingly dangerous situation.

What Went Wrong?

1-) The probability of heat being transferred from the other cargo tanks to the styrene monomer cargo was not fully considered during the planning and approval of the cargo stowage.

2-)Despite being a requirement in rules, the temperature of the styrene monomer was not monitored, and the temperature alarms available on the cargo monitoring system were not set. The crew also either did not notice, or did not recognise the significance of, the elevated temperatures of the cargoes discharged.

3-)The actions to be taken on encountering elevated temperatures in the styrene monomer cargo on board , which were stated on the procedure of inhibitor, were not done.

Source: Report on the investigation of the cargo tank explosion and fire on board the chemical tanker Stolt Groenland Ulsan, Republic of Korea 28 September 2019

Credits:Onur Ozutku

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#Polymerization #safety #fire #explosion #chemical #monitoring #runawayreaction #tanker #casestudy #riskassessment #vessel #cargo