InterviewStarch plastics hope to ride green wave

12 April 2008 00:36  [Source: ICIS news]

By Brian Ford

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Starch-based plastics technology company Cerestech hopes to ride the green wave of environmentally friendly products, but its president on Friday acknowledged that such products must also be price competitive.

“Everybody says consumers love environmental products but are not willing to pay for them, but our products are competitive,” said Graham Chapman, president of Montreal, Canada-based Cerestech.

The small technology development and licensing company was spun off in 2001 from the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school of Montreal to commercialise polymer/thermoplastic starch (TPS) blends. 

The company licenses technology that allows starches from corn, wheat and tapioca to be used as substitutes for conventional plastics in applications such as films, bags and injection moulded products.

Chapman said the technology overcomes the problems that have haunted by earlier developers of starch-based materials.

“Starch is hydrophilic - it likes water; while polyethylene doesn’t like water,” Chapman said. “If you put a hydrophilic and hydrophobic together you can have poor mechanical properties - to diminish these properties has been a challenge.”

“The other problem that includes most starch-based products is you get humidity sensitivity,” Chapman said. “If you make a film purely out of starch it is horrendously susceptible to changes in environmental humidity.”

Using technology developed by the Ecole Polytechnique’s Basil Favis, makers of film and injection-moulded products can incorporate the materials with up to 30% thermoplastic starches, the company said.

Chapman touted the technology’s green benefits.

“The main advantage is that we are replacing a petrochemical- or gas-derived polymer with an annually renewable material.” Chapman said. Production of thermoplastic starches emits up to 90% less greenhouse gases than polyethylene, according to the company.

Also, despite a recent upswing in the costs of corn and wheat, Chapman said products made Cerestech’s technology will remain competitive with products made purely from oil and gas-based feedstocks.

Pitt Plastics is introducing a new sustainable can liner made from a blend of linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) and thermoplastic starch made with Cerestech technology, the company said.

Bookmark Doris de Guzman’s Green Chemicals Blog for some independent thinking on green chemicals

By: Brian Ford
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