NPE: Plastics help solve global needs

The world’s environmental and social trends are major drivers of innovation at plastics producers. Global challenges such as reducing packaging waste, lowering energy consumption, improving food and water availability are some of the areas where companies are concentrating their efforts.

DuPont, for example, says it is primarily focused on developing innovative solutions to meet growing global demands in food, energy and protection. For Dow Chemical, the key markets for its innovation efforts include transportation, packaging, consumer durables and infrastructure.

Getty Images

Dow says it is focusing on innovation in high-growth markets that are aligned to some of the world’s toughest challenges, including developing solutions to improve the availability of food and fresh water, as well as more resilient housing and more fuel-efficient transportation.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Undoubtedly, customers are a major source of identifying potential new products or solutions. “Our customers are a huge insight and we also work with external groups and consultants to identify emerging trends and changing demographics,” says Phil Wilson, business intelligence manager, performance materials, at BASF.

Carolann Haznedar, DuPont’s vice president, packaging and industrial polymers Americas, agrees that insights into customer needs and market drivers are critical for successful innovation, adding that “collaboration is the catalyst needed to gain those insights”.

Collaboration and partnerships are highlighted as a prime factor in pursuing innovation, one that lies at the heart of many producers’ R&D strategies. Contact with customers at multiple levels through sales, technical, R&D and management staff provides a continual flow of information around their needs and opportunities for development.

Trends may vary by market segment, but all align to a common purpose of delivering end-use products that perform better, last longer, look and feel great and are more environmentally sustainable, says Dow.

Engagement with partners in the supply chain has yielded plenty of successes for the plastics companies. Recent launches include PacXpert packaging technology for Dow under a licence agreement with Ken Wilkes, inventor of Smart Bottle technology; a moulded deep-black, high-gloss polyamide resin developed for interior components by BASF in collaboration with Ford Motor Company; a polyamide engine manifold part developed by DuPont, again for Ford; as well as a next-generation golf ball it created for Nike.

In collaboration with Cima NanoTech, SABIC has developed a transparent conductive polycarbonate (PC) film that it claims has the potential to revolutionise materials used in various end-markets. SABIC says the joint 
innovation could translate into faster response touch screens for consumer electronics, transparent “no-line” anti-fogging capabilities for automotive windows, better shielding effectiveness of electromagnetic interference (EMI) for electronics, and transparent Wi-Fi/Bluetooth antennae for mobile devices.

Vikram Gopal, vice president of technology at INVISTA Engineering Polymer Solutions, says providing innovative support to help original equipment manufacturers achieve the new CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards was one of the factors behind its development of TORZEN Marathon high-temperature polyamide 6,6 technology (see box). Turbochargers are one means of improving fuel efficiency, but they raise the temperature under the hood, which some resins are unable to withstand.

Thierry Materne, vice president technology, SABIC’s Innovative Plastics business, says the twin challenges of reducing carbon emissions and rising fuel costs have aircraft cabin designers calling for materials that lower weight, while achieving regulatory compliance and sustainability requirements. This, combined with the demand for modern, light-filled cabins, prompted SABIC to expand its range of Lexan XHR film and sheet.

“The new Lexan grades were designed to give engineers pre-coated materials that, without the need for secondary processing, meet the highest industry standards for flame resistance while also delivering the highest level of light transmission available in an OSU compliant sheet,” says Materne.

Lightweighting in the automotive industry is also driving innovation. SABIC says it has responded with a number of solutions, one of which is an alternative for steel tailgates. The all-plastic tailgate, designed and fabricated by SABIC, weighs nearly 28lb less than a metal one, representing a 30% saving in weight.

Companies continue to invest in expanding their R&D facilities around the world. Designed to facilitate collaboration, open innovation and problem solving, DuPont opened its first Innovation Centre in Japan in 2010 and now operates 13 of them around the world, connecting visitors to 10,000 scientists. Haznedar says that in several countries, the Innovation Centres are adjacent to R&D and application development facilities so that DuPont can work with customers from concept through commercialisation.

BASF has established a cross-business unit team to foster and encourage an environment and behaviours that are conducive to innovation, says Mark Minnichelli, director of technical development at BASF Performance Materials. The innovation team holds events around the country to share information and ideas.

“We do much more cross-business and international sharing of customer needs, products and solutions and approach customers as one BASF rather than 14 smaller businesses,” he says. The company has started distributing its corporate R&D resources, currently heavily concentrated in Ludwigshafen, Germany, to other regions, notably North America and Asia, notes Minnichelli.

“We will continue to move traditional R&D services closer to locations near our customer base,” he says. “We have large and important customers around the globe. The fastest way to understand opportunities for development is to bring solutions to them and have resources close by everywhere we do business.”

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Prototyping is an important part of product development and BASF has created a virtual tool that it believes is relatively unique in the industry. Ultrasim is a computer-aided engineering (CAE) tool that can more accurately predict the performance of a fibre-reinforced thermoplastic component during injection-moulding processes (see box). “Ultrasim gives BASF customers a competitive advantage as we believe that no other material supplier has this type of capability,” says Minnichelli.

By the end of this year, Dow will have completed a relocation of multiple businesses from several locations to one research campus – its Northeast Technology Center in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Earlier in 2014, the company broke ground on its Texas Innovation Centre in Lake Jackson, which will replace existing laboratories and buildings with one new facility.

Haznedar says Dow continues to add Pack Studios around the world to help facilitate onsite customer collaboration in the packaging business. The Pack Studios are a significant example of Dow’s “collaborate-to-innovate” approach. They comprise a global network of packaging experts, equipment and testing capabilities that can bring solutions to market faster as well as give valuable insight into future trends, design, emerging technologies and functionalities for multiple applications.

SABIC has a network of 19 global technology and innovation centres in locations such as the US, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, India and China. Materne says in the past year, SABIC has opened technology centres in Shanghai and Bangalore. Earlier this year, SABIC’s Innovative Plastics business opened a new global centre focusing on electronics and electrical and lighting science and technology in partnership with Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Suwon, South Korea.

Collaboration with customers and other partners to cultivate a deep understanding of the trends and challenges that face world markets will supply a continual rich pipeline of ideas. The opportunities for plastics innovation appear limitless.

3D PRITING IN THE SPOTLIGHT NPE2015 will mark the inaugural event for NPE3D, a programme that enables attendees to explore emerging 3D printing trends and technologies behind the working parts produced directly from digital files, including three-dimensional prototypes, mould components and even finished parts. Getty Images According to PolyOne Corporation, the material sponsor for NPE3D, this technology is enjoying significant growth within manufacturing end-markets. 3D printing (also known as rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing) has been around for almost 30 years, but was focused primarily on toys and form-and-fit prototypes for most of this time. In the last several years, however, the focus has changed. Thomas Hughes, open innovation programme director at PolyOne, explains: “In the universe of additive manufacturing, functional engineered parts and tooling are being manufactured using polymer systems via Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) and Stereo Lithography (SLA). These techniques are being used in niche applications with relatively low production volumes and high product value, such as aerospace interiors, automotive parts, medical devices, customised consumer products and sporting goods.” In addition, Hughes says that Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is conducting projects around Department of Energy needs, including lightweight components for automotive and wind energy applications. “High temperature aerospace material development is also quite active today,” he adds. “In fact, PolyOne is currently collaborating with academic, government and manufacturing partners to develop 3D printing materials for fully functional production parts in aerospace and automotive applications.”

SOFTWARE ACCURATELY PREDICTS PERFORMANCE

BASF’s evaluation tool Ultrasim is a computer-aided engineering (CAE) software that geometrically maps a plastic part and predicts its performance. The integrative computer simulation can monitor each phase of development for fibre-reinforced thermoplastic components.

Plastics reinforced with short glass fibres in particular have anisotropic (directionally dependent) properties depending on how the fibres perform when injection moulded.

Ultrasim can account for a component’s material, geometry and process, and predict how it would behave under different properties and circumstances. The virtual environment can test multiple factors such as how a material will hold up under different temperatures as well as analyse loading conditions and rates.

Thermoplastic parts are helping automotive manufacturers meet weight reduction targets and BASF says Ultrasim can help customers reduce waste and ensure that when a part is chosen, it will perform as expected. Ultrasim can predict a product’s performance within 5% of its value.