Thermoplastic market

Figure 15.2 Glass-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic market data (numbers represent MM kg) [1]...

Table 2.28 displays some recent thermoplastic market shares for Western Europe. Note the supremacy of PVC followed by PS with thermoset competition for insulation. 

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PIT is a semicrystalline polymer synthesized by the condensation of PDO with either terephthalic acid or dimethyl terephthalate, followed by polymerization. Studies of PTT had never gone beyond academic interest until recent years because one of its raw materials, PDO, was very expensive and available only in a small volume. PTT received less attention compared with PET and PBT. However, recent breakthroughs in PDO synthesis made PTT available in industrial quantities, thus offering new opportunities in carpet, textile, film, packing, and engineering thermoplastics markets. 

Some of the main properties and applications are given next for the five main thermoplastics, which together account for 75% of the total thermoplastics market. 

Poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT) is an opaque rigid thermoplashc useftd for many structural applications, e.g. in carpet, textile, film and packing and other engineering thermoplastic markets, where rigidity, strength and toughness are required [88]. 

J. R. Best and T. C. Kelly, The Growth of the Fiber Glass Reinforced Thermoplastics Market in the United States , 29th Annual Technical Conference, Reinforced Plastics/ Composites Institute, The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc., Washington, DC, 1974. 

Non-food crops is a misleading term in the present context since bioplastics are currently manufactured from food crops (polysaccharides, edible oils, etc.), not from nonfood crops. Consequently, the manufacture of bioplastics must be in competition with the production of food [72,73]. No serious attempts have so far been made by to estimate the respective usage of agricultural land currently used in food production that would be required to produce the equivalent tonnage of bioplastics to satisfy the commodity thermoplastics markets. 

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