BIOMER RISES TO TECHNICAL CHALLENGE OF NEW THERMO-PLASTIC POLYMER SYSTEM

Client: Global Chemical Company

Project: structure modified TPU

Opportunity

The client is a specialty chemical company seeking to incorporate a proprietary high performance polymer into the backbone of a TPU. The intention being to create an injection mouldable and extrudable form of the resulting polymer for component and device manufacture whilst maintaining its inherent performance characteristics. In addition to the basic performance requirements, the resultant polymer had to be compatible with commercial pigments and process additives.

Biomer’s challenge was to develop a synthetic process capable of combining essentially low compatibility, low molecular weight polyols into a flexible and robust thermo-plastic polymer system capable of 1000 tonne/annum+ production volumes.

Solution

Biomer’s initial approach was to address the compatibility issue of combining dissimilar starting materials. It did this by creating individual prepolymer precursors more compatible than the original starting polyols. These precursors were then reacted under carefully controlled processing conditions and the resultant intermediate chain extended to produce the final polymer.

Result

Following an intensive iterative development cycle to refine the resultant polymer properties, the initial development batch size of 25Kg has been up scaled to a 1 metric tonne batch size for downstream processing and customer trials.

Outcome

The optimized polymeric platform development has been completed for the client’s own customer trials. Once successful, the process will be verified and validated for large scale production.