Lapol, LLC enables bioplastics to be both performance and cost competitive for its users. Its resin technologies include two granted patents and two patents pending in the biopolymer field which improve the heat deflection temperature and toughness of poly lactic acid (PLA) based resins.
Polylactic acid is the front runner of bioplastics, but it has limitations:
Low Heat Deflection Temperature (HDT) 50 - 60 °C: Sticking and Deformation During Transport, Storage and Use
Brittleness: Poor Impact Resistance
Long Mold Times: Costly to Process
Lapol® HDT-P biopolymers for PLA drastically increases the melting point of PLA based products to enable it to be useful in both durable and disposable high temperature applications such as food service, automotive, credit card stock, electronic devices and summertime transit. By enabling high temperature PLA, many other applicatons can now use PLA and high temperature summer transit of PLA products will not longer stick or warp with the use of Lapol® HDT-P. Lapol® HDT-P also imparts toughness and reduces PLA brittleness and has been demonstrated to increase throughput in converting equipment.
Lapol® 108 renewable bioplasticizer and melt viscosity enhancer enables polymers to be functional in standard processes such as injection molding, extrusion coating, thermoforming and cast films. It maintains high melt viscosity when processing polylactic acid (PLA) to enable high concentrations of inorganic mineral in compounds. It also promotes toughness and flexibility without sacrificing modulus while minimizing glass transition temperature reduction.
Biodegradability & Compostability Lapol® bioplastic resins are compostable and is biodegradable under composting conditions in about 35 days based on the ASTM D6400, EN 13432 & ISO 17088 standards.
Flexibility & Toughness Lapol® bioplastic resins increase flexibilty and toughness with little sacrifice in modulus. See the toughness graph.
Maintains PLA Melt Viscosity In order to compound a high mineral content into PLA, it is often necessary to increase the processing temperature to get a homogeneous and thoroughly mixed compound, this results is a very low melt viscosity which induces processing difficulty. When Lapol® 108 bioplastic resin is compounded into PLA resins, at levels as low as 5%, it enables very high mineral content loading without the loss of melt viscosity. Clarity Lapol® bioplastic resins are miscible with PLA and only minimally affect the clarity of PLA. Haze does develop with higher concentrations, but one can still see through the plastic. Many applications will need about 5%-10% concentration of Lapol® and therefore, only a little haze should be expected. Compatibility Lapol® bioplastic resins are compatible and miscible with PLA up to 20%. Unlike compounding with 100% petroleum-based aliphatic/aromatic copolyesters (AAC), there is no need to add additional costly compatibilizers or processing aids for improved compatibilization. Since PLA and Lapol® are "like polymers" they are very compatible in compounding so there is no die swell out of the compounder, a common phenomenon with petroleum based plasticizers. Download Lapol® 108 & PLA Compatibility SEM Micrograph
"Heat-Ability"
The new Lapol® HDT-P additive for increasing the heat deflection temperature of PLA is now available; by using the Lapol® HDT-P additive, PLA can now be used wherever higher temperature performance is needed such as >100 °C (212 °F), it will not warp or distort in hot weather transit or in use for items such as hot coffee, soups or higher temperature durable plastics applications. Reduced cycle times of up to 40% have been demonstrated which can offset the heat deflection temperature additive costs. Click here to Download the Lapol HDT-P Technical Bulletin. For more information, please email us at info@lapol.net.
See the Cutlery Heat Deflection Temperature Video Demonstration To see the non-deformation or deflection demonstration comparing a 100% PLA fork and a knife soaking in hot water (95 °C/203 °F) to an 80% PLA and 20% Lapol® HDT compound click here.
