Alok Technology Incubation Centre – breaking down the plastic molecule
We had an opportunity to visit the Alok Technology Incubation Middle in South Delhi'southward Okhla Industrial Area a few days ago. The creator of this platform is Alok Masterbatches, a Rs. 400 crore (U.s.a.$ 60 meg) company with six masterbatch manufacturing plants including five in India and ane in Latin America. The newest plant in Silvassa has a capacity of manufacturing 5,000 tons a month. ATIC is the applied science platform that it established near five years ago to foster a much-needed R&D culture in order to come up upwards with technology solutions for its customers.
At ATIC, Vikram Bhadauria, who leads the technology team of the company as a whole, introduced us to vice president of engineering Dr Nitin Joshi and showed us around the center consisting of a research lab, a lab with advance measuring instruments, a mixing lab or kitchen for making experimental masterbatches, and finally a small extrusion blown film machine for producing prototype films and structures.
Bhadauria says, "We gear up this industry 25 years ago, and we gear up ATIC v years ago with the cadre philosophy of adding skilful to everything whether it is relationships or plastics. Earlier nosotros built R&D teams that subsequently half-dozen months used to get coopted past production. We wanted to separate the R&D and do something scientific and new without any financial targets—to piece of work on something new to build new products and new production technologies, non only masterbatches, simply to really recollect of something new.
ATIC is an open technology platform for anyone to come and utilize it for help in finding solutions for their plastics applications—anything and everything for electric current and futurity needs. After nosotros started with a fresh batch of engineers straight off the campus, customers slowly came to u.s. for a variety of reasons – perhaps they had seen something in Europe or the US and asked if information technology could be produced hither. Global suppliers came to usa looking for Indian partners."
ATIC is a success story that has won awards for its innovative R&D solutions. Bhadauria explains its mission, "In India we come across that there is shortage of durable products and while plastics offer many solutions, keeping our weather in mind we have to brand sure these are safe, sustainable and likewise affordable."
He explains that the masterbatches (or additives) developed by ATIC are used in several key areas of plastic direction such as UV and IR radiation, electromagnetic interference shielding, density modification procedure improvement and heat management. "Thus you tin can use plastic to make tent material for the Indian ground forces which works in common cold weather, in a snowy environment and merely past flipping information technology over, in hot and desert conditions. This is done just by heat direction. At that place is electrical management of plastics also, such equally anti-static, which is useful for defense force applications such as explosives and EMI shielding (electromagnetic interference shielding) for all kinds of electronic products and instruments. With density management of plastics we can make them lighter and with thermal management of plastics, we tin take plastics conducting heat."
Bhadauria, like several leading Indian plastic industry professionals, was educated at one of the finest chemical and plastic engineering schools in the world, at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, which is also partnering the PlastIndia Foundation in building its Plastics University in Vapi, Gujarat. He gives examples of some the notable R&D successes of the visitor, "In 2003, a farmer contacted united states of america who had used some films in Israel and he wanted assistance in producing some special mulch films for agriculture for which he foresaw a big market in India. Autonomously from seeking our center'southward help, he used diverse consultants and testing facilities including Central Establish of Plastic Engineering (CIPET) and even brought some ingredients from Europe.
"Ultimately, we helped him produce a moving-picture show that worked likewise, if not better, than the Israeli movie. In 2015, this agricultural film won the states the innovation accolade. At present from one car he has iv machines to produce these films – from being a farmer he has become an industrialist."
It is clear that in its time of trouble plastics will have to be driven by sustainability. This is well understood past Bhadauria and he is articulate almost it, "On plastic waste – at that place are three pillars to this: manufacture, government and lodge." Right now in that location is a bit of noise effectually the issues and when the situation evolves Bhadauria expects the word to become more scientific.
Oxo-biodegradable plastics
Ironically the government has banned just plastic utilize less than fifty microns, which is generally a single plastic construction and which should exist piece of cake to recycle. The real claiming is to produce multi-layer plastics of multi-polymers that do non accept to exist merely down-cycled into inferior products. The rules of a circular economy dictate that materials after use and re-use are recycled into products of equivalent or greater value outset and only and then downwardly-cycled. He adds that even with many regular oxo-biodegradable plastics there is still a question mark, considering with these one piece of plastic merely breaks down into a million pieces. Plastic, which has a molecular weight of 500,000 Dalton (Da), takes about 70 to fourscore years to dethrone and the trunk cannot assimilate it.
Bhadauria tells us about ATIC's successful partnership with Willow Ridge, a leading manufacturer of oxo-biodegradable additives. Willow Ridge has a very unique oxo-biodegradable technology that transforms plastic films into mulch in half dozen to viii months, which is appropriate for many applications.
The Willow Ridge technology reduces the molecular weight of plastic from 500,000 Da to below 4,000 Da. Annihilation organic, and plastic is organic, that is below 4,000 Da becomes bio-digestable – if a fish eats information technology, an animal or homo eats it, it is digested and thrown out. The enzymes assail it. Willow Ridge has developed a technology that makes sure the degradation goes beyond 4,000 Da.
Taking on the multilayer plastic recycling challenge
Bhadauria also tells us near how ATIC is working with three technologies – one for making oxo-biodegradable plastics and the other with which we tin recycle a multi-layer structure. This is a 5-layer multi-layer structure that is recyclable – that volition exist laterally recyclable. It could be used for instant noodle or biscuit pouches, by calculation an additive masterbatch to help recycle multi-layer structures. "We were approached by a partner and we accept developed a product for which nosotros have filed a patent and which will exist recyclable.
A third product is anti-static additive for films used for explosives or electric and electronics. "Our additive makes the plastic permanently anti-static. This product can be used for the packaging of electronics," says Bhadauria.
We ask him about some of the price bug and as in all his calm and articulate responses, he says, "The client will pay, particularly when the authorities comes in with multi-layer legislation. This happened in the white goods manufacture when self-regulation and not legislation was needed for eliminating heavy metals in whatsoever plastic that they use. The cocky-regulation came from Samsung, LG and others. The inputs are available; it is upwards to the industry and order and the government to go their act together merely it is obvious that the manufacture can pb; all it takes is i leader.
"If Patanjali says tomorrow that their packaging is laterally or upwardly recyclable, everyone will leap on the bandwagon. For the past xx years the plastic industry has been saying that plastics don't pollute, people practice. This is so like to the National Rifle Associations slogan that says 'Guns don't impale people, people kill people.' Our blaming the public is being associated with such a negative slogan that it has set the plastic industry back." It is articulate Bhadauria has some simply may be not all the answers, merely he has built something that can contribute to our curiosity, our science and our ability to take on the future.
How much practice y'all really know most packaging
What is the unit for the molecular weight of plastics?
The unit of MW for polymers is the same as that of not-polymeric compounds; it is grand/mol (or Dalton, Da). This is very simple in non-polymeric compounds (eastward.k., NaCl salt), but in the instance of polymers it is and then complicated as they include long macromolecular chains with diverse length size. Information technology is more common to state the MW of polymers as a statistical mensurate and degree of polymerization (DP), which is the average number of monomers in the polymer sample. Therefore, DP is the boilerplate MW of polymer divided by the MW of monomer.
Answered by Saeed Doroudiani, PhD, P.Eng., chemical engineer, Materials/Polymer Scientist on 29 July 2022 on Quora. · Upvoted by Miranda Marcus, applications engineer at EWI specializing in Plastic Joining · Writer has 1.6k answers and 1.4m answer views
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