The new material BioCelain® A 101 from Merseburg-based Exipnos GmbH passed its acid test on the blow molding machine with flying colors: Experts from the company Sauer in Neustadt near Coburg produced round bottles from the biodegradable PBS polymer without any special effort. Exipnos presented the newly completed samples at Fakuma 2021 as an initial result of the RUBIO project, which had only recently been launched.
Merseburg, October 13, 2021. Polybutylene succinate (PBS) is not exactly a material that blow molders typically work with. “For us, PBS is still quite exotic,” admits Alexander Umlauf-Sauer, Sales Manager at Sauer GmbH & Co KG. This is not only due to its limited availability to date, but also because the biodegradable plastic is usually “not very melt-stable,” explains the expert: “Where it is not contained in a closed system – as is the case with injection molding, for example – PBS melt tends to succumb to gravity, leading to material breakage.”
Game-changer with a soft feel
BioCelain® A 101 from the Merseburg-based company Exipnos has now proven to be a game-changer: The PBS polymer with a melt flow index (MFI) of 1 g/10 min could be “easily processed into round bottles on the blow molding machine,” as Umlauf-Sauer praises: “The end product is soft and its feel is more comparable to LDPE than to HDPE.” The bottles are suitable, for example, “as disposable containers for shampoo or sunscreen, but also for reusable items such as bicycle water bottles.”
The new material and the samples produced from it are the first results of the “Regional Entrepreneurial Alliance for Building Value Chains for Technical Bioplastics in Central Germany – RUBIO,” launched in September. The research and development project, led by Exipnos, is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 12 million euros. An additional five million euros is being invested by the 18 participating companies and research institutions, including Sauer GmbH & Co. KG from Neustadt near Coburg.
Building regional value chains
“ RUBIO ’s goal is to establish a complete value chain for bio-based PBS within three to five years, producing this material, which is currently rare on the global market, here in the Central German lignite mining region and thus helping to shape the structural transformation that has already begun,” explains Peter Putsch, Managing Director of Exipnos. The conditions for this are excellent: “The necessary specialists are already present in and around the Central German Chemical Triangle,” enthuses the co-initiator of the alliance. Biotechnologists who can produce the PBS base material succinic acid from fermentation waste and wood residues using microorganisms are working together at RUBIO with “experienced plant engineers, compounders, processors, product developers, and recycling professionals.”
Harbinger of further innovations
Following the official start of work in September 2021, intensive research is already underway in five collaborative projects. The participating partners are linking the development of production and processing methods with systematic material studies. “We want to create an entire family of bio-PBS polymers that fully exploits the potential of this plastic,” explains Peter Putsch. The targeted spectrum ranges “from packaging and lightweight construction to technical textiles.” The bottles made of BioCelain® A 101 at Fakuma are therefore just the harbingers of a whole series of innovations that can be expected from RUBIO by 2024.
Further information
You can find more information about BioCelain® A 101 in our product section.