Home

About LAPOL

Application Information

FAQ's

Contact Us













NOTE: Lapol, LLC is currently seeking to sell the company, its four patents and its technologies to an appropriate party who can capitalize on the many benefits of Lapol's technology to enable the use of polylactic acid by reducing its brittleness, improving melt strength and increasing the heat deflection temperature.  Please contact us for further discussion. 

Welcome to LAPOL®

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.      

Click here to download our company presentation.

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.                                                                                                                                  
We invite you to learn more by clicking here to download the Lapol® HDT-P Technical Bulletin.  

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. 

Characteristics

Renewability & Sustainability
Lapol® bioplastic resins are predominantly plant derived.

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. 

Click here to read the article in the
September 2010 Edition of Agricultural Magazine, Helping Earth-Friendly, Corn-Based Plastics Take the Heat.

 


 

   Home | About LAPOL® | Application Information | FAQ's | Contact Us

Copyright©2019. LAPOL ®. All Rights Reserved.