weeklypellet

Here’s What Happened Last Week

KRLD News Room

Radici Group acquires Invista’s engineering polymers group

BASF to cut European caprolactum production

Techmer opens new compounding plant

Hexpol introducing new line TPEs with enhanced feel

Weekly resin report: PE spot prices inch higher

Izod Impact: ISO vs ASTM

math-class-1916 — Sorry for all of the math in this post

If you are unaware, there are two sets of test methods that are currently in use for many of the common tests that we see reported on data sheets and certificates of analysis. This has caused a lot of confusion.

To add to the confusion, I have seen many data sheets and certificates of analysis in which data is reported incorrectly. None more than izod impact. There is currently an ASTM method and an ISO method for testing izod impact. Although some data sheets claim that they are, the two test methods used for izod impact are definitely not equivalent. They are two different test methods and there is no way of converting between the two.

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Here’s What Happened Last Week

Long Row of Typewriters

Nova Chemicals new LLDPE reactor reaches mechanical completion

SABIC sells polymershapes business to investment firm, Blackfriars Corp and here

Formosa Plastics Group posts 105.7 billion dollar revenue

Demand for recycled PP reaches nearly 300 million pounds per year

LyondellBasell picks LaPorte Texas for new HDPE plant

Ravago buys International Plastics Corp

Weekly Resin Report: Month ends in buying spree

Some Observations From The Last 28 Years In The Plastics Industry

Plastics Selector Inside — I spent many hours looking through these books.

As I mentioned in a recent post, after a number of years of searching, I finally found a copy of the Plastics Materials Digest – International Plastics Selector. Before the internet, when I needed to find a material or look up properties, this is how I did it.

The books contain thousands of property data sheets as well an index that allows you to look up materials by trade name and even physical properties.These books were very good. If you needed a polypropylene with tensile strength over 3600 psi, you could find it in the index and then it would refer you to the page where you could find the full data sheet.

The copy that I found happened to be from 1988, the same year that I started in the industry.

I have had a little time to look through the book now and I have a few observations.

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Here is What Happened Last Week

The Front Page Newsroom

KraussMaffei develops new polyamide reaction process

Dow announces start-up of Sadara mixed feed cracker

Ravago buys recycler and compounder Industrial Resin Recycling

Polyplastics buys Teijin share of Win Tech PET, PBT joint venture

Sonoco sells its blow molding operations to Amcor

Albis to open a compounding plant in US

Double digit PP price increases in the offing?

Nantucket Island to ban all plastics packaging

Demand for recycled polypropylene robust

Have a Great Labor Day Weekend!

Integrated Assembly Line 1913 — 1913: At the Highland Park Plant in 1913, Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line for cars. Within 18 months it took only 1.5 man-hours to build a Model T. The modern auto industry was born.

A Little Piece of Plastics Industry History

Plastics Selector Cover

Back in the pre-internet days, this is the book that we all used to look up materials and find property data sheets. The Plastics Materials Digest: International Plastics Selector.

I have been looking for one of these old books on Ebay for a couple of years now and I finally came across this near perfect copy dated 1988 which happens to be my first year in the industry.

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All About Polyethylene

PE Pipe

Polyethylene was first discovered by accident in a laboratory in 1898. This is a running theme throughout the history of the plastics industry. It was not until 35 years later that the first commercially viable polyethylene was synthesized in 1933 by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The long gap between the initial discovery of a polymer and the commercialization is also a recurring theme in the history of the plastics industry.

Polyethylene is the most commonly used plastic globally. According to Wikipedia, annual production is around 80 million metric tons or 176 billion pounds. It is used in many applications such as film that is used for everything from moisture barrier to grocery bags. It is also used for things like pick-up truck bed liners and tanks of all kinds. In recent years, polyethylene has been used for increasingly demanding applications like automotive fuel tanks, potable water pipe, artificial hip joints and even fiber for bulletproof vests.

Polyethylene’s use in these increasingly demanding applications has been made possible by innovations from the material manufacturers. Unlike TPO, these innovations have not happened at compounders but during the reaction of the polymer. These innovations have brought a dizzying array of new polyethylene materials to the market. A quick look at Matweb shows that there are currently 5534 different grades of polyethylene. I want to break down some of the different types that are now available.

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