UHMWPE-Assisted Melt Strength Enhancement of Recycled PLA for Lightweight Foaming
Rostislav Vilem, Ondrej Mertlik, Tomas Plachy, Lukas Manas, Tomas Sedlacek
TL;DR
Adding UHMWPE to recycled PLA improves its melt strength and allows for lightweight, high-performance foams suitable for insulation and packaging.
Contribution
A novel method to enhance recycled PLA's melt strength using UHMWPE for foam production.
Findings
UHMWPE/PLA composites showed a 5.3-fold increase in melt strength compared to recycled PLA.
Composite foams achieved a thermal conductivity of 0.019 W m–1 K–1 and a density of 0.217 g cm–3.
The method uses standard techniques, making it scalable for industrial applications.
Abstract
Increased utilization of biodegradable polymers to achieve sustainability and decrease the carbon footprint is connected with a necessity to find an effective way of their reutilization. Polylactic acid (PLA), and generally all biodegradable polymers, undergoes significant degradation during reprocessing cycles, leading to inferior products when compared with the original material. Here, ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) was incorporated as a reinforcing phase to create a polymer–polymer composite capable of restoring and enhancing the melt strength of recycled PLA. While recycled PLA lost melt strength during reprocessing, limiting its foamability, the UHMWPE/PLA composites exhibited up to a 5.3-fold increase in melt strength, enabling stable cell growth and expansion during foaming. The composite foams also showed a substantial reduction in thermal conductivity to 0.019…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsPolymer Foaming and Composites · biodegradable polymer synthesis and properties · Polymer crystallization and properties