Biopolymers blends

The two commercially most important Ecoflex /biopolymer blends will be presented Sects. 4.2.1. and 4.2.2. These are Ecoflex /starch blends (not marketed by BASF) and Ecoflex /PLA blends (marketed by BASF, Ecovio ). 

When liquid-liquid phase separation occurs, resulting in water-in-water emulsions where the different biopolymers are concentrated in the different phases, and when one or both phases can gel, these systems can be used to produce anisotropic microgel particles and/or gel composites with anisotropic inclusions, resulting in a variety of interesting microstructures and morphologies. An interesting concept to generate alternative gel structures with basis on phase separated biopolymer blends... 

One area of material science where ET-IR imaging has proved to be of extraordinary importance, in terms of scientific and practical aspects, is that of polymer analysis and polymer physics. In order to illustrate the broad range of appUcability in these disciplines, we will now discuss some selected examples in detail, ranging from phase separation in biopolymer blends, the use of polarized radiation to produce anisotropy images of inhomogeneously deformed polymer films, and determination of the diffusion coefficient of D2O in an aliphatic polyamide. 

Smita Mohanty is working as a Scientist at Laboratory for Advanced Research in Polymeric Materials (LARPM). Dr. Mohanty s research interests include biopolymers, blend nancomposites and natural fiber based composites. She has 8 years of research experience and has 50 research publications and 5 patents to her credit. She has guided 15 Masters Thesis and 2 doctoral students. 

The increasing use of bio-based, but non-degradable polymers as additives in biopolymer blends tends to impair their biodegradabiUty. For co- and ter-polymers, the increasing use of non bio-based blend components or petrochemical monomer raw material necessarily leads to a reduction in the amount of bio-based material in the final polymer material. Currently, no minimum content levels have been established for bio-based material components in biopolymer blends and co- or ter-polymers. Therefore, polypropylene-starch blends or various copolyesters are considered biopolymers, even though they are non-biodegradable and their bio-based content is significantly smaller than their petrochemical content. 

Shamsiui, A.A., Abdullah, D.K., and Daik, R. (2012) Fabrication of agar/biopolymer blend aerogels in ionic liquid and cosolvent mixture. Cellulose Chem. 

Renewable sources Chemical synthesized Microbial aynthealzed Biopolymer blends... 

Chapter 3 provides a brief review of recent developments in areas of amorphous polymer blends. Differential mixing, chain dynamics, and glass transition properties for individual polymer components in miscible binary blends, as well as new methods to experimentally acquire such information, are considered. Miscible blend dynamics and length scales of mixing of amorphous polymer blends are discussed. Amorphous biopolymer blends involving polymers obtained from renewable feedstocks is also briefly reviewed. 

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