Page 41 - Packaging News Magazine Jan-Feb 21
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January-February 2021 | www.packagingnews.com.au BIOPLASTICS | UPDATE
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RENEWABLE AND SUSTAINABLE
Infographic: bioPET and PEF (Avantium)
Jöran Reske of the German-based research and waste recovery network co-ordinator Interseroh. “There’s a cer- tain degree of compatibility between PLA and PP, for example, but the feel- ing among the great proportion of recy- clers is that bioplastics in the material recovery stream will disturb systems currently in place. However capable a bio-based solution may be, there’s not much point in its adoption if it can’t be easily recovered or disposed of. We need to acknowledge that there will be a mounting volume of plastics that cannot be mechanically recycled, and for which we should be looking at energy from waste and better still, chemical recycling.”
Although it only accounts for the reprocessing of 0.02m tonnes per year of plastic waste across the EU, there is gathering support for chemical recy- cling from legislators with all of the member states bar Germany. Industry, too, is showing a serious interest. “Of course we’re not going to be able to mechanically recycle everything, which in any case has an end of life as there’s only so many times you can repeat the process,” notes bioPP pro- ducer Neste’s vice-president for brand owner management Lars Borger. “We’re working on a pyrolysis solu- tion that we believe will be able to deliver more than 1m tonnes by 2030.”
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
The annual EuBP conference has always provided a platform for emerg- ing technologies and innovative
product and packaging applications; as often as not ahead of commerciali- sation. A regular presenter is the Amsterdam-based specialist in renewable and sustainable chemistry solutions Avantium, whose business development manager Baudine Gevers Deynoot gave an update on the progress of the company’s proprie- tary Ray Technology: a one-step pro- cess with a 100 per cent theoretical yield for producing plant MEG.
A pilot plant opened in the Netherlands in late 2019, and with production easy to scale-up Avantium has its sights set on secur- ing a proportion of a growth market set to amount to 50m tonnes by 2035.
Over 20 per cent of all fossil-based MEG goes to PET bottles, in which it accounts for 30 per cent of con- struction; the balance made up of PTA (purified terephthalic acid), of which Avantium is also developing a plant-based alternative so as to deliver a 100 per cent bio-PET or bio- PEF bottle.
With global demand for MEG increasing by 1.25m tonnes each year the potential for a bio-based solution is considerable since as the average capacity of a production facility is about 260,000 tonnes it would require over 80 new plants to come on stream. Avantium is looking for partners: brand owners to use its glycols in planned applications, and investors to take a direct interest in the Ray technology itself, says Baudine Gevers
BELOW: PLA & PP combined in spunbond non woven technology to produced 10m N95 surgical masks for US healthcare workers (NatureWorks).
Deynoot. “We cannot build a bio- based circular economy by ourselves; we need partners, and to collaborate with the whole value chain.”
Hitherto, India Glycols has been the only global supplier of bio-MEG. Other developers now becoming involved include UPM, who are building a plant in Germany to pro- duce sugars from wood-chips; and Braskem who are currently trialling a demo line.
Targeting the food service sector’s dependence upon single-use plastic, French specialist compounds manu- facturer Cabamix is extending its capacity of calcium carbonate (CaC03) to produce fully compostable cutlery items made with a blend of PLA or PHA. Not only does the addi- tion of chalk accelerate the biode- gradability, but trials of the com- pound have shown there to be a similar speeding up of the produc- tion process too: injection-moulded ice-cream spoons achieving a 40 per cent reduced cycle rate.
The 16th European Bioplastics Conference will be held in Berlin dur. ing 30 November – 1 December 2021
