Abstract
Food packaging films must be reinvented in order to answer the new demanding ecological requirements. Biobased and/or biodegradable polymers appear as an interesting alternative to reduce petroleum dependence and carbon dioxide emissions. Poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) appears today as a new promising biopolymer thanks to its good gas barrier and mechanical properties, despite its high price that could limit its industrial applications. Its combination with other polymers is thus of great interest and for the first time, film coextrusion process is used to create PLA-PEF and PET-PEF multi-micro/nano layered films. A new PEF grade developed by AVA Biochem in the H2020 Mypack program, has been used and firstly analysed in terms of melt processability, mechanical, thermal and gas barrier properties. Our major results confirmed the good gas barrier as well as mechanical properties of amorphous PEF. Post-extrusion PEF bulk thermal crystallization led to very brittle material making gas barrier measurements impossible. Micro/nanolayered PLA-PEF and PET-PEF films with different PEF layer thicknesses have been processed and post-extrusion annealing treatment was carried out. The relationship between crystallinity, mechanical and gas barrier properties will be investigated.
Highlights
Food packaging films must be reinvented in order to meet the new demanding requirements concerning the reduction of plastics consumption and petroleum dependence, and the limitation of the number of plastics used in order to ensure their recyclability
Since poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) must be extruded at temperature higher than 250°C in order to avoid crystallization at the die exit. and despite the fact that Poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) must be usually extruded at temperatures between 220 and 240°C to avoid degradation, the layer multiplication device temperatures were set respectively to 250°C for PET-PEF films and 220°C for Poly(Lactic acid) (PLA)-PEF films, in order to limit PLA degradation. 100 μm thick films of neat polymers and multi-layered films with 10 to 15% w/w PEF amount were produced with 3, 128 and 512 alternating layers
If it was possible to fabricate all the 3, 128 and 512-layer PLA-PEF films, it was not possible to produce the 512-layer PET-PEF film due to a bad stretchability compared to PLA-PEF films
Summary
Food packaging films must be reinvented in order to meet the new demanding requirements concerning the reduction of plastics consumption and petroleum dependence, and the limitation of the number of plastics used in order to ensure their recyclability. Relationship Between Crystallization, Mechanical and Gas Barrier Properties of Poly(eth. Drawbacks that limit its use, such as brittleness, low temperature stability and poor gas barrier properties [1]. It is important to improve PLA gas barrier properties in order to reach the performance of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) (around ten times better than PLA). Optimizing PLA crystallization may improve its gas barrier properties [2, 3] and its thermal stability but leads generally to a dramatic loss of ductility. Poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) is another new promising biopolymer offering reduced barrier properties compared to PET (around 6 to 10 times) and similar temperature stability [4]. We combine PEF with PET or PLA in multilayer films for the first time, using coextrusion process. The relationship between PEF crystallinity and thermal, mechanical and gas barrier properties will be highlighted
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