> ""What's exciting about this," he said, "is we can go to as low as 1 percent of our additive, and you get a plastic alloy that really has super-great properties.""
The properties of a polymer are specific to the application intended. "Super-great" doesn't appear on a spec sheet [0]. If you're making plastic for high pressure natural gas pipe, you go with a polymer that is different from a film resin. Plastic producers work closely with the end users to craft polymer that matches very specific applications. It's possible that this additive can be crafted for different applications, but combining polyethylene and polypropylene is already starting from different beasts.
In the world of polyethylene, I previously worked at a plant that made ~50 different grades/resins ranging from low to medium to high density PE for wildly different applications (pipe, blow molding, film, etc.). Of those 50 resins, they were made from 2 different catalyst systems and multiple actual catalysts. All of our end product was nominally "polyethylene". That detail worked to ensure you made exactly the polymer you wanted for the application. It is this specification of properties that prevents recycled material from ending up in the critical high volume applications.
If you're making millions of milk jugs a day, it doesn't matter that a single milk jug is worthless. You're using machinery that is custom tuned to the polymer you are running. That tuning relies on the polymer having specific, repeatable properties. We had customers complain when an identical resin was made from different plants at the complex.
> ""If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it.""
Plastic producers can already make stronger polymer that requires less material. Presumably the milk jug folks don't want to pay the premium for it. The same is true of this additive. What does it cost? It's the reason we don't make everything metal out of titanium.
The properties of a polymer are specific to the application intended. "Super-great" doesn't appear on a spec sheet [0]. If you're making plastic for high pressure natural gas pipe, you go with a polymer that is different from a film resin. Plastic producers work closely with the end users to craft polymer that matches very specific applications. It's possible that this additive can be crafted for different applications, but combining polyethylene and polypropylene is already starting from different beasts.
In the world of polyethylene, I previously worked at a plant that made ~50 different grades/resins ranging from low to medium to high density PE for wildly different applications (pipe, blow molding, film, etc.). Of those 50 resins, they were made from 2 different catalyst systems and multiple actual catalysts. All of our end product was nominally "polyethylene". That detail worked to ensure you made exactly the polymer you wanted for the application. It is this specification of properties that prevents recycled material from ending up in the critical high volume applications.
If you're making millions of milk jugs a day, it doesn't matter that a single milk jug is worthless. You're using machinery that is custom tuned to the polymer you are running. That tuning relies on the polymer having specific, repeatable properties. We had customers complain when an identical resin was made from different plants at the complex.
> ""If you could make a milk jug with 30 percent less material because it's mechanically better, think of the sustainability of that," he said. "You're using less plastic, less oil, you have less stuff to recycle, you have a lighter product that uses less fossil fuel to move it.""
Plastic producers can already make stronger polymer that requires less material. Presumably the milk jug folks don't want to pay the premium for it. The same is true of this additive. What does it cost? It's the reason we don't make everything metal out of titanium.
[0] http://www.cpchem.com/bl/polyethylene/en-us/tdslibrary/Marle...