PET Bottle Performance Boosted with Nanomaterials

It’s a tough time to be a polymer manufacturer. While demand for plastic products remains strong, there is a growing call for plastic producers to do more to limit environmental damage. Public opinion is firmly against using more plastic and politicians are eager to increase taxes, such as carbon credits, or install penalties for plastic waste.

And no part of the polymer sector is feeling the pressure more than packaging producers.

While the more eco-friendly choices for packaging manufacturers previously lay in using an alternative feedstock, such as paper, today there is another alternative – nanomaterials.

Due to their exceptional strength to weight ratio, nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, make an ideal raw material for polymers.

One example of how nanomaterials are being used to improve polymer products is being conducted at the American-based company Hydrograph. Here nanomaterial specialists have developed a graphene powder which when applied to a bottle made from a 50% blend of virgin PET and rPET with just 0.006% by weight of added graphene has been found to produce some impressive results. These include:

·       A 23% gain in top-load compressive strength.

·       An 83% decrease in water vapor transmission rate.

·       A potential weight reduction of approximately 20%.

“These performance gains in PET arrive at a critical moment for the packaging industry,” saysKjirstin Breure, interim CEO and president of HydroGraph Clean Power Inc. “As manufacturers struggle with the challenge of increasing recycled content while managing costs and maintaining performance, our technology offers a solution that addresses these needs simultaneously. By enabling significant material reduction while improving performance with recycled content, we're helping the industry meet environmental mandates without compromising product competitiveness.”

“While the exact ROI varies by application, our early prototypes demonstrate the technology's commercial viability,” says Tom Eldridge, the company’s Director of Business Development. Furthermore, nanotechnology in polymers is not limited to use in PET. “We're actively developing applications for polypropylene, polyethylene, nylon, PEEK and other plastics through both internal R&D and customer partnerships,” he adds.

“The primary value comes from weight reduction, specifically the material savings from using less plastic more than offset the cost of our graphene additive,” notes Eldridge. “Weight reduction equates to lower transportation costs across the supply chain, offering additional savings for manufacturers and distributors.”

Furthermore, the application of nanomaterials into polymers goes much deeper than using graphene to make PET bottles stronger and lighter.

Today, nanotechnology is widely used to enhance the properties of polymers and rubbers in the automotive and aerospace sectors. It is also used to produce improved masterbatch supplies and high-performance compounds for use in industry. Packaging manufacturers are also developing new ways to incorporate nanomaterial compounds into blow-moulded packaging items in order to increase productivity, save costs, or achieve better performance.

In addition to these advances, the latest polymer technologies allow for sensors to be built directly into the polymer packaging. These sensors change colour when they detect chemicals released from food substances as they near their expiry date. They can also be designed to alert if tampering or breakage has occurred.

Although, most significantly, it is nanotechnology’s ability to help solve the problem of plastic circularity which may be of most importance. According to HydroGraph analysis, current global PET bottle production could potentially be reduced by 20% (5 million tonnes per year) through the widespread use of nanomaterials as a feedstock. This could avoid more than eight million tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere and lessen the global plastic waste problem.

“It’s amazing what a single layer of atoms can do,” says Rick Lingle, the Senior Technical Editor at Plastics News. “For example, graphene is formed from hexagonal lattices of carbon atoms that make the structure incredibly strong. That’s a key reason why graphene nanotechnology is gaining traction for markets from electronics to energy storage to packaging.”

And it seems unlikely that the versatility of nanomaterials will stop there.

To find out more about how nanotechnology can improve manufactured products, such as polyethylene, polycarbonate sheeting, epoxy resins, and coatings, visit POLYMER NANO CENTRUM.

POLYMER NANO CENTRUM, which support this website, are specialists in the development of nanotechnology solutions for manufacturing. Since 2016, they have been providing manufacturers with coatings, raw materials, and tailormade solutions with nanomaterials.

Contact POLYMER NANO CENTRUM today, to find out how its expertise and state-of-the-art research centre can reduce input costs or provide unique selling points.

Photo credit: Tanvi Sharma on Unsplash, Niculcea Florin, The Ian, & Charlesdeluvio