Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:PVC Vs CPVC

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

The main difference between CPVC and PVC processing:

The main difference between PVC and CPVC processing lies in thermal stability and viscosity.If you don’t apply moderate temperatures and heat to CPVC, it won’t melt, and its physical properties won’t perform well. Hydrochloric acid decomposes when exposed to high temperatures.

Temperature Tolerant:

Because of the change in composition, CPVC can withstand a broader range of temperatures. The ASTM standard enables PVC to be used in applications not going beyond 140 degrees F. Meanwhile, products made from CPVC such as pipe have a recommended max operating temperature of 200°F. CPVC operational temp can satisfactorily range from 200°F to 230°F, given proper conditions of pressure and chemical suitability.Because of this, many building codes stipulate that CPVC rather than PVC be used in hot water applications.

Chemical Resistance:

CPVC is known for its superior chemical resistance compared to PVC. CPVC is highly resistant to acids, bases, and other corrosive chemicals, including many that can damage or degrade PVC over time. This property helps CPVC become the preferred choice for applications in chemical processing plants or where there is a risk of chemical exposure. PVC, on the other hand, is more susceptible to chemical attacks and may degrade over time exposed to certain chemicals.

Mechanical Resistance:

The addition of chlorine to CPVC increases its heat tolerance, yet alters the material's strength. CPVC and PVC are both relatively sturdy materials, however, due to CPVC's higher degree of hardness, the latter is more likely to crack. CPVC is more brittle than PVC, it may be deformed or fractured with less effort.On the other hand, CPVC is more flexible than PVC. 

CPVC Pipe

Chlorinated Polyvinyl chloride is manufactured by chlorination of the Polyvinyl Chloride polymer. Chlorination is the process of adding chlorine to any element to treat any impurities, for example, the chlorination of water makes it germs-free. CPVC pipes are more flexible than UPVC or PVC pipes. CPVC pipes have a unique ability to transfer hot and cold water. 

Here are some of the characteristics of a CPVC pipe:

Corrosion-resistant 

Just like a UPVC pipe, CPVC pipes prevent damage against harmful UV rays and are suitable for outdoor usage as well.

Lower bacterial growth

Due to the chlorination of the PVC material,CPVC pipes have a lower growth rate of bacteria as compared to metal, cement, and other thermoplastic based pipes.

Self extinguishing

These pipes are self-extinguishing,it’s the reason why they’re sometimes used for water sprinklers.

Flexible and strong

CPVC pipes are really strong just like any other variant of the PVC pipe family. However, these pipes are surprisingly much more flexible than the other variants.

Temperature resistant

CPVC pipes are resistant to temperature changes that makes them a suitable option for the supply for both hot and cold water.

source:Europlas/vectus

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:Modified Polyphenylene Ether resin

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Features of Modified-Polyphenylene Ether (m-PPE) resin XYRON™ DG series and XP series

When developing a demanding application part, the challenge is to handle materials with appropriate characteristics such as heat resistance, electrical properties, flame retardance, dimensional stability etc.

Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) resin is a super engineering plastics with excellent heat resistance, low- Coefficient of Linear Thermal Expansion (CLTE), excellent chemical resistance,and flame retardance. PPS resin is expanding in applications in automotive,electronics,electrical parts,water supply and drainage applications.

Polyphthalamide (PPA) resin is a super engineering plastics with excellent heat resistance comparing with aliphatic polyamides (PA, nylon), which has good chemical resistance, and strength. PPA resin is also expanding in applications in automobiles, electronics and electrical parts.

Asahi Kasei’s m-PPE Resin XYRON™ PPS/PPE alloys DG Series and PPA/PPE alloys XP series combine the properties of PPE with the above characteristics of super engineering plastics, yielding novel materials whose unique properties will help to meet your most demanding needs.

Advantage to alloy with PPE:

The following three characteristics of PPE provide the advantages of alloying super engineering plastics with PPE.

PPE has the lowest specific gravity of all engineering plastics, and switching from conventional materials to PPE products not only helps to reduce weight and cut costs by using less volume of plastics, but also reduces greenhouse-gas emissions in shipping due to the lighter weight of shipped items.

PPE has the lowest specific gravity of all general-purpose engineering plastics, and switching from conventional materials to PPE products not only helps to reduce weight and cut costs by using less volume of plastics, but also reduces greenhouse-gas emissions in shipping due to the lighter weight of shipped items.

PPA is a crystalline resin and has amide bond, which may causes dimensional change when it absorbs water. Dimensional accuracy can be improved by alloying PPA with PPE, which is an amorphous resin and has a very low water absorption rate.

 

XYRON™ DG series (PPS/PPE alloys):

XYRON™ DG series (PPS and PPE alloys) boast improved dimensional stability,excellent injection moldability, with low warping or burr formation, comparing with super engineering plastics PPS.CLTE of PPS/PPE alloys is stable over a wide temperature range, and these alloys offer stable mechanical properties even at high temperatures. Alloying with PPE yields materials with exceptional electrical properties, enhancing freedom in designing highfrequency devices.

 

XYRON™ XP series (PPA/PPE alloys):

Alloying PPE and special PPA, which exhibits lower water absorption and higher heat resistance, even compared to other PPA, stand out for their high strength, low water absorption, and high dimensional stability, even in high-humidity, high-temperature environments.

source:Asahi Kasei

Mitsui Chemicals to Close Ichihara Phenol Plant, Shifts to Green Chemicals

Mitsui Chemicals announces that it has decided to close the phenol plant at its Ichihara Works by no later than fiscal 2026.

The Mitsui Chemicals Group’s Basic & Green Materials Business Sector includes the phenol business. They are aiming to redefine itself as a sustainable green chemicals business centered around competitive derivatives.

Addressing Falling Demand & Oversupply in Phenol Market:

The Group works toward an optimized production setup at their crackers line with demand. They will need to ensure that its derivatives are competitive. This need prompted the Group to begin restructuring its Basic & Green Materials Business Sector shortly after the 2008 global financial crisis. The Group is now further accelerating its efforts toward this end as part of a second phase of restructuring, which will include the newly announced plant closure.

Mitsui Chemicals currently produces phenol at three locations - Ichihara in Chiba, Takaishi in Osaka and Shanghai in China. Following the launch of phenol production at the Ichihara Works in 1970, Mitsui Chemicals’ phenol business continued to grow. It was driven by rising demand for key derivatives - bisphenol A and phenolic resin.

Since 2022, however, a range of factors have made the business environment more difficult. This includes falling domestic demand, as well as a drastic oversupply on account of new production facilities launched in China and other parts of Asia. Mitsui Chemicals has responded with a range of rationalization efforts to sustain the business. But Mitsui Chemicals has now decided that it is no longer feasible to secure the profitability needed to maintain phenol production at its Ichihara Works.

While the phenol plant at the Ichihara Works will cease operations, Mitsui Chemicals intends to maintain a steady supply of products to its customers by building a phenol chain with high capital efficiency and stable profitability.

Mitsui Chemicals’ Basic & Green Materials Business Sector supplies materials to a wide range of industries that together act as the backbone of society. And going forward, this business sector will pursue a green chemical transition by replacing petrochemical raw materials with alternatives such as bio-based hydrocarbons and chemical recycling.

Overview of the phenol plant to be closed:

Source: Mitsui Chemicals/specialchem.com

Phillips 66 announces major milestone in production of renewable diesel

Phillips 66 has announced a major milestone in its conversion of the San Francisco refinery into the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex - expanding commercial scale production of renewable diesel.

The Rodeo Renewed project has progressed, with the facility now processing only renewable feedstocks and producing approximately 30,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel.

The Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex is on track to increase production rates to more than 800 million gallons per year (50,000 bpd) of renewable fuels by the end of the second quarter, positioning Phillips 66 as a leader in renewable fuels.

“We are proud to announce this significant achievement at our Rodeo facility,” said Rich Harbison, Phillips 66 executive vice president of Refining.

“The project advances Phillips 66’s long-held strategy to expand our renewable fuels production, lower our carbon footprint, and provide reliable, affordable energy while creating long-term value for our shareholders.”

Harbison added: “We’ve had strong execution to-date and are fully focused on finalizing the project in the second quarter.”

The Rodeo Renewed project design also provides the capability of producing renewable jet, a key component of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), expected to start production in the second quarter of this year.

Phillips 66 made a final investment decision to move forward with the Rodeo Renewed project in 2022, transforming the San Francisco refinery into one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities.

As a world-class supplier of renewable fuels, the converted facility leverages a premium geographic location, unique processing infrastructure and flexible logistics to significantly reduce lifecycle carbon emissions.

source:biofuels-news.com

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:Bacteria Strain to plastic Biodegradable

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

New Bacteria Strain that Makes Plastic Highly Biodegradable and Fracture Resistant

Engineered bacteria can produce a plastic modifier that makes renewably sourced plastic more processable, more fracture resistant and highly biodegradable even in sea water. The Kobe University development provides a platform for the industrial-scale, tunable production of a material that holds great potential for turning the plastic industry green.

Bacterial Plastic Factory Produces LAHB Chains in High Amounts:

Plastic is a hallmark of our civilization. It is a family of highly formable (hence the name), versatile and durable materials, most of which are also persistent in nature and therefore a significant source of pollution. Moreover, many plastics are produced from crude oil, a non-renewable resource. Engineers and researchers worldwide are searching for alternatives, but none have been found that exhibit the same advantages as conventional plastics while avoiding their problems. One of the most promising alternatives is polylactic acid, which can be produced from plants, but it is brittle and does not degrade well.

To overcome these difficulties, Kobe University bioengineers around TAGUCHI Seiichi together with the biodegradable polymer manufacturing company Kaneka Corporation decided to mix polylactic acid with another bioplastic, called LAHB. LAHB has a range of desirable properties, but most of all it is biodegradable and mixes well with polylactic acid. However, in order to produce LAHB, they needed to engineer a strain of bacteria that naturally produces a precursor, by systematically manipulating the organism’s genome through the addition of new genes and the deletion of interfering ones.

In the scientific journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, they now report that they could thus create a bacterial plastic factory that produces chains of LAHB in high amounts, using just glucose as feedstock. In addition, they also show that by modifying the genome, they could control the length of the LAHB chain and thus the properties of the resulting plastic. They were thus able to produce LAHB chains up to ten times longer than with conventional methods, which they call “ultra-high molecular weight LAHB.”

Highly Transparent and Shock Resistant:

Most importantly, by adding LAHB of this unprecedented length to polylactic acid, they could create a material that exhibits all the properties the researchers had aimed for. The resulting highly transparent plastic is much better moldable. It is more shock resistant than pure polylactic acid, and also biodegrades in seawater within a week.

Taguchi comments on this achievement, saying “By blending polylactic acid with LAHB, the multiple problems of polylactic acid can be overcome in one fell swoop, and the so modified material is expected to become an environmentally sustainable bioplastic that satisfies the conflicting needs of physical robustness and biodegradability.”

Source: Kobe University/Omnexus.specialchem

China’s first hydrogen-powered city train conducts high-speed tests

Developed by Changchun Railway Vehicles, a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC, China’s first hydrogen energy urban train ran a trial run in Changchun, Jilin province, reaching a full load operating speed of 160 kilometers per hour. The hydrogen energy train uses 35 MPa – 165 L hydrogen storage cylinder sets produced by Sinoma Suzhou, a subsidiary of Sinoma Technology.

This train adopts a distributed hybrid power supply solution with multiple energy storage and multiple hydrogen energy systems, and applies the hydrogen-electric hybrid energy management strategy and control system.

 “Each hydrogen energy urban train is equipped with 4 systems. Each system is composed of two 165 L hydrogen storage cylinders. The hydrogen storage capacity of 8 cylinders of 165 L reaches 31 kilograms“, Li Shihong, senior engineer of Sinoma Suzhou, said.

Hydrogen energy urban trains use an energy supply method that combines hydrogen fuel cells and supercapacitors to replace the original power supply solution. The energy is generated by the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen in the hydrogen fuel cell. The reaction product is only water, making it environmentally friendly and zero-carbon, according to the company.

Sinoma Suzhou is mainly engaged in fuel cell hydrogen cylinders, hydrogen energy storage and transportation containers, compressed natural gas cylinders, high-end industrial gas storage and transportation equipment. Its products and services are widely used in various fields such as automobile manufacturing, gas storage and transportation, and drones. It has five production bases in Chengdu, Suzhou, Jiujiang, Shenyang and Jining, with an annual production capacity of more than 700,000 types of gas cylinders (Type III hydrogen cylinders have a production capacity of 100,000 units/year and Type IV hydrogen cylinders have a production capacity of 30,000 units/year), providing products and services to many domestic vehicle and energy manufacturing companies.

Type IV pressure vessels use fiberglass / carbon fibre composites winded over a plastic liner. They are the most popular type in hydrogen vehicles due to lightweight, volume capacity and resistance, according to JEC Observer, Overview of the global composites market 2019-2024, a report published by JEC Group.

source: Sinoma Suzhou/jeccomposites

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:Tiger Stripes

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Any surface particle on a molded part used to belong to the Fountain Flow free surface.

Free surfaces for a visco-elastic material typically suffer from flow instabilities, and these end-up creating surface defects on your molded part. High front velocity and especially flow front acceleration/deceleration will trigger flow instabilities and defects.

This is why the gate area and the end of flow (see picture) are so prone to surface defects. We do have the highest velocity at the gate and a potential extreme velocity at the end of flow (or slowdown due to switchover).

"Tiger Stripes" are a well known defect due to Fountain Flow instabilities triggered by a change of flowfront speed.

source:Vito leo