The project was to create a biodegradable product that can be used as a matrix for composite materials. The uniqueness of this material is in the nettle filler which reduces the cost of the polymer while maintaining its strength characteristics and increasing its elasticity and heat resistance.

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By using nettle fibre together with recycled polymers, it can reduce the polymer content by 50% leaving the possibility to further process this composite and use it as secondary raw material. It’s hoped that products like bio-packaging for household chemicals and food products, environmentally friendly children’s toys, jewellery, dishes, office supplies, and even bodies for electronic devices can be created with the materials.

Plans and funding of 60,0000 euro are in place to further develop and scale up the project with Chemelot Chemicals.

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The car, designed and manufactured by students at the Helsinki Metropolia University of applied sciences has replaced traditional plastic parts with high quality, durable biomaterials, and demonstrates the possibilities of improving the overall environmental performance of car manufacturing.

The passanger compartment floor, centre console, display panel cover and door panels have been made from a thermoformable wood material. A cellulose fibre reinforced plastic composite product designed for injection moulding, extrusion and thermoforming applications was used to make the front mask, side skirts, dashboard, door panels and interior panels.

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Pekka Hautala, Project Director from Metropolia University says;

Sustainability is a major subject globally. We were excited to be able to design and build a vehicle that would demonstrate that already today we have biomaterials that are a real alternative to traditional oil-based materials. During the past four years of building the Biofore Concept Car, our students have come to see that these biomaterials are of high quality, durable and also offer new design opportunities

The vehicle runs on a wood-based renewable diesel, which will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels. This product called BioVerno is suitable for all diesel engines, including the 1.2 litre low-emission diesel engine featured in the Biofore Concept Car.

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The new system is based on DSM’s 40% bio based, styrene free, cobalt free resin system. The company say that the use of this resin brings faster resin infusion and requires only limited post-cure. The system also incorporates 3B’s glass rovings. Through an optimised sizing applied on the glass filaments an excellent fibre/ resin interaction is obtained, resulting in improved composite properties for a long-lasting blade operation.

The new system has received the 2014 Innovation Award from JEC in the Sustainability category, ,” explains Karsten Schibsbye, Manager Next Generation Blade Project, Siemens Wind Power.

For Siemens the new composite system provides many benefits, including a major reduction in blade manufacturing cost and an increased process output

The post Companies Team up to Develop new Composite Wind Turbine Blade System appeared first on Composites Today.

Sofinnova Partners’ Green Seed Fund led the financing along with Scottish Enterprise through its investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), Claridge and a syndicate of angel investors.

The company founded in 2004 uses a proprietary technology to extract nano-cellulose fibres from the waste streams of root vegetables to produce a unique product called Curran. This product provides a highly performant, environmentally-sound and economically-viable solution to rheology (thickening) and reinforcement in multiple industries, such as paints & coatings, home and personal care, concrete, oil drilling and composites. CelluComp is in the process of scaling-up its production and commercialising its product globally.

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Christian Kemp-Griffin, CEO of CelluComp, commented;

Along with founders David Hepworth and Eric Whale I am extremely pleased to have raised this round of financing with such important partners. This investment not only gives the company the needed funds but also brings a combined level of expertise and professionalism that will allow the company to be successful quickly.

The post CelluComp Receives Funding for Bio-Composite appeared first on Composites Today.

The product has been engineered to generate the acoustic quality of a much larger instrument. From its patented hollow-neck design to its high-tech eco-fabric and resin construction, the Clara is meticulously crafted by skilled artisans at Blackbird’s San Francisco workshop, aided by computer-driven precision technology.

Clara has been made using Ekoa, a product made using renewable plant fibres that give the ukulele great strength, dampening, resilience and even lighter weight than carbon fibre. Like all composite materials, Ekoa is made up of fibre reinforcement fabric in resin matrix, but one that is worker and planet-friendly. The plant-based fabrics and biobased resins have a beautiful designer material quality, which does not always require finishing along with distinct performance advantages over other composites. The Clara ukulele, is the debut application of Ekoa which is suitable for numerous other applications from sports equipment to furniture.

The post Introducing Clara, the first Natural Fibre Composites Ukulele appeared first on Composites Today.

In Colombia, banana cultivation provides employment to over 170,000 people, according to data collected by the Ministry of Agriculture and rural development in 2011 353,297 hectares were cultivated, with a production of 2,815,693 tonnes. The leaves and stalks that are leftover from this farming, instead of being wasted could be used in the creation of banana fibre brining in additional revenue to the industry.

A project from the Department of Industrial Engineering of the National University of Colombia, in Manizales, managed to use the plant’s stalk to obtain a high quality reinforcing material.

Natural fibres in contrast to inorganic materials such as glass and carbon fibre are irregular due to their cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin composition, which makes them unsuitable for reinforcing materials. In order to change this, Lady Johana Rodríguez, Master in Industrial Engineering, developed a chemical process which modifies the internal structure of banana fibres. This innovation makes it possible to obtain more uniform surfaces, with a better resistance to environmental corrosion, high temperatures and water absorption (they are hydrophobic).
 
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The treatment consists in their submersion, for 24 hours, in a compound made of epichlorohydrin, an anhydrous acetic reactant and acetone. They are washed in acetone and distilled water and dried in an oven for a day. They are afterwards tested for resistance, hydrophility (water absorption), heat and alkalinity.

Once treated the fibres repelled water by up to 33.3% and resistance to air moisture increased by 32.43%, extending durability. Additionally, using micrographs made with scanning electron microscopes, it was observed that the surface was smoother, leading to a perfect adhesion to the polymer matrix,” stated the researcher.

Thermal tests, which measured the resistance to high temperatures, showed an increase in their ability to withstand heat of 6.84%. This property is required to develop bio composites because industrial machines are used to melt the polymers adhered to the fibres.

In view of these positive results, more studies are set to be carried out, it is hoped that the advances will result in an additional income for the farmers, who will be able to process the fibres using special machines.

The post Going Bananas in the Search for Greener Composites appeared first on Composites Today.

The BioMobile.ch project was founded in 2004 to look at ideas for promoting sustainable mobility, focusing on ‘individual mobility’ at a project level in an attempt to lower fossil energy consumption. Since its creation, the vehicle has gone through three development stages and the latest adaptation sees the replacement of the remaining non-renewable structural components with renewable materials.

The body, chassis and most of the structural parts of the BioMobile are now made entirely from various vegetable fibre reinforcements impregnated with a specially developed epoxy system from Huntsman Advanced Materials which contains over 50% bio-based resin.

The bio-based resin system helped to optimise the mechanical properties of the prototype, it also played an important role in demonstrating that individual mobility with a lower energy signature is possible within both manufacturing and vehicle usage.

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The BioMobile’s fuel consumption rate is approximately 0.12 litres per 100 km and it now runs on X41, a biofuel made from organic waste.

Originally developed as an energy-efficient vehicle for international competitions such as the Shell Eco-marathon, which challenges teams to go the furthest they can using the least amount of energy, the BioMobile has been updated over the years to integrate new bio-based fuels and renewable materials.

Developed within the Haute Ecole du Paysage, d’Ingénièrie et d’Architecture de Genève, which is part of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, the prototype’s development has involved the participation of a number of young people from schools in Switzerland and France as well as several European industrial partners.

Recent research undertaken by Huntsman indicates that it is now commercially possible to produce resin systems for industrial applications with a bio-based content that is higher than 80% – when combining up to 100% bio-based resins and up to 80% bio-based hardeners.

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The AMRC Composite Centre started working with biocomposites as part of E-light, a collaborative European project to investigate new lightweight materials for electric vehicles. The team investigated the use of fibres from flax and bamboo, as well as an epoxy resin derived from cashew nut husks which would normally go to waste, and produced two fairing panels for the AMRC’s Mantra lorry as showpieces.

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Some of the young researchers at the AMRC Composite Centre then started looking at the potential for these materials in an area of special personal interest: snowboarding. The team launched an internal project which became known as SUSC: Snowboard Using Sustainable Composites.

Development engineer Craig Atkins said;

Snowboards need to be stiff, strong and light, so are typically made from glass fibre or carbon fibre composite with a wooden core, we decided to take a look at replacing these with more sustainable materials. Flax is a relatively cheap bio-material, with good mechanical properties, and a very good candidate for use in snowboards.

The team made two boards from flax fibres embedded in a resin containing 30 per cent of cashew shell epoxy. The core was made from recycled PET foam, derived from old plastic bottles and other waste. One of the boards is currently being put through its paces by an AMRC team member who is in the Canadian Mountains, while the other board is being showcased at the centre in Sheffield.

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The frames are lighter by nearly a third because they contain more air and wastage during production is also reduced. The framework for the kitchen of the future will be compression moulded or extruded – familiar methods in the plastics industry. The result is a component of exact dimensions, which does not need to be cut or drilled after production. Even the screw-holes are there when the component comes off the production line.

The natural fibre reinforcement in biocomposites can be sawdust, pulp, flax, hemp or peat. The new material is significantly stronger than chipboard and has excellent moisture resistance.

VTT has developed this new material in cooperation with the Finnish kitchen fitments maker Puustelli. Professor Harlin believes that furniture companies will be attracted to the new production technique, because it will enable them to save on production and transport costs. The investments in new machinery will pay themselves back in a few years according to Harlin.

Industrial designer Juhani Salovaara, designer of the Puustelli composite kitchen, says that the starting point for the design was to achieve the smallest environmental impact and the largest degree of domestic origin possible.

The composites used in Puustelli kitchens are manufactured by the Finnish forest industry enterprise UPM. According to Salovaara, the degree of domestic origin of biocomposite furniture frames is in the region of 90 per cent. The material’s breaking strength and moisture resistance are top class. It is also significant for the end user that the furniture’s formaldehyde discharge is clearly diminished.

Professor Ali Harlin thinks it likely that the innovation will also be of interest outside Finland. Some European furniture makers have tried composites, but their production techniques are based on traditional cutting.

According to Harlin, VTT will continue developing biocomposites and charting new applications for them.

One point of interest lies in whether biocomposites could be used in cars and other vehicles. In that field, weight is money even more than in furniture.

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One limiting factor though is that there today is no industrially viable production process available for producing the DuraPulp material into granules for injection moulding. The research project MouldPulp intends to change this. The aim of the 3-year research project is the development of a processing technology that allows making injection moulded parts out of DuraPulp® but keeping the naturalness material identity. A multidisciplinary and international team from Sweden, Finland and Germany led by Fraunhofer UMSICHT is working on this.

The technical approach is to combine the DuraPulp process with a special compounding process. The objective is to achieve a high fibre amount and at the same time a gentle compounding process and homogenous fibre dispersion. Afterwards, the granules will be injection moulded to sample specimens and technical parts. The material properties and moulded parts characteristics will be tested and evaluated. A recycling concept with the separation of polymer and fibres will be explored. The development process is framed into a techno-economic and ecological assessment of the novel processing technology.

The project consortium covers the whole value chain from a raw bio-based material up to plastic products for consumers. It consists of R&D-institutes, material and application developers, raw material producers, and plastic processing companies:

• Fraunhofer-Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT, Oberhausen, Germany
• Innventia AB, Stockholm, Sweden
• Södra Skogsägarna Ekonomisk Förening, Väröbacka, Sweden
• FKuR Kunststoff GmbH, Willich, Germany
• Elastopoli Oy, Sastamala, Finland
• Hammarplast Consumer AB, Tingsryd, Sweden
• Nova-Institut GmbH, Hürth, Germany

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