Polymers commodity/engineering

Despite the simplicity of chemistries presently employed for the commercially available hyperbranched polymers, these materials are still relatively high priced compared to traditional commodity polymers. This is undoubtedly related to the early stage, low volume demands for these products. Hyperbranched polymers will evolve as substitutes for traditional polymers as their unique properties are used to greatly enhance products on a cost-performance basis. In summary, the enhanced used of hyperbranched polymers in engineered products will depend upon many of the following prerequisites ... 

Commodity and engineering polymers. On the basis of end use and economic considerations, polymers can be divided into two major classes commodity plastics and engineering polymers. Commodity plastics are characterized by high volume and low cost. They are used frequently in the form of disposable items such as packaging film, but also find application in durable goods. Commodity plastics comprise principally of four major thermoplastic polymers polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, and poly(vinyl chloride). 

Development of cost-effective technology for polymer blends that can continue to bridge the performance gaps between the commodity, engineering and specialty polymers. 

Synthetic polymers can conveniently be divided into three groups commodity, engineering and specialty. Their relative annual production can be approximated by the ratio 100 10 1. Thus, it is logical that the main emphasis has been for recycling of the commodity resins (see Eigure... 

Molecular composites—reduce concept to utility for commodity/engineering polymers. 

Polymer blend manufacturers continue to identify new application areas for polymer blends by working closely with the customers to identify the niche opportunities. Hence, engineering design and application developments are currently the major thrust areas in polymer blends. Engineering polymer blends tend to be more expensive than commodity polymers, due to higher processing and material costs. Hence, for high-volume applications like automotive, there is... 

During the last years, several new families of high performance polymers and engineering plastics have been reported which find enhanced application potential in the more challenging application areas like aerospace, defense, energy, electronics, automotives etc. as compared to the commodity or conventional polymers. Such polymers provide improved set of properties like higher... 

Polyolefin blends with crystalhne engineering polymers (e.g., polyamides, aromatic polyesters) offer specific cost/performance advantages over the individual components. As these blends are positioned between the commodity polyolefin polymers and engineering polymers, they wiU be discussed in this section. These blends are highly immiscible and also mechanicaUy incompatible as binary blends, thus the majority of the pubhshed investigations involve compati-... 

The mechanical properties of agro-polymers are generally a lot weaker than those of commodity engineering plastics. Their properties are also strongly dependent on moisture content as well as other plasticizers because of their characteristic hydrophilicity. Apart from these, the most prevalent factors alfecting the mechanical properties include processing conditions and composition. 

This chapter has described the apphcation of HTPBs in fuel and solar cells as well as in aerospace. The three categories of HTP constitute but a small portion of the total polymer production, namely commodity, engineering, specialty and ultra categories, 95.29,4.5,0.2 and 0.01 wt%, respectively. By adjusting the molecular parameters and incorporating suitable additives, the commercial polymers may be formulated for a variety of other applications. 

Acrylic ESTER POLYMERS Acrylonitrile POLYMERS Cellulose esters). Engineering plastics (qv) such as acetal resins (qv), polyamides (qv), polycarbonate (qv), polyesters (qv), and poly(phenylene sulfide), and advanced materials such as Hquid crystal polymers, polysulfone, and polyetheretherketone are used in high performance appHcations they are processed at higher temperatures than their commodity counterparts (see Polymers containing sulfur). 

New developments are hydroxylamines and lactones (for processing stability), which operate at an earlier stage during stabilisation. Lactone (benzofuranone) chemistry has been identified as commercially viable, and marks a revolutionary advance in comparison to hindered phenols and phosphites [18]. New lactone chemistry (Figure 10.1) provides enhanced additive compatibility, reduced taste and odour (organoleptics), resistance to irradiation-induced oxidation, and inhibition of gas fade discoloration. The commercial introduction of fundamentally new types of stabilisers for commodity and engineering polymers is not expected in the near future. 

The terms thermoplastic and thermoset refer to the processability of a particular polymer and the properties of the finished article. Thermoplastic polymers are mostly a linear or branched linkage of monomers containing many thousands of repeat units. All the commodity polymers and most of the engineering polymers are thermoplastic. 

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