Issue 03/2016
bioplasticsMAGAZINE_1603
bioplasticsMAGAZINE_1603
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Basics<br />
By:<br />
Jan Ravenstijn<br />
Senior consultant Biopolymers and<br />
Industrial R&D management<br />
Meerssen, The Netherlands<br />
In 2015, however, the PHA scene began to turn around:<br />
more players became active at an industrial level, lower PHA<br />
prices were being offered, sales volume began to develop<br />
and a large number of value chain alliances across the whole<br />
value chain came about. All these accelerated the global<br />
market acceptance and penetration of PHA products.<br />
Today there are more than 30 companies active in<br />
development, manufacturing and scale-up of PHA products.<br />
Several of those decided to make and market their own PHAcompounds<br />
since they do not always have good experiences<br />
working with compounding companies. A CEO of one of the<br />
companies mentioned: “Most compounders do not properly<br />
process my PHA polymers, despite instructions on how to do<br />
it, so I decided to develop and to produce compounds myself<br />
and bring those to the market”.<br />
The PHA polymer platform development has been<br />
dominated by Technology Push for a long time based on a<br />
“Look what we can do” attitude and backed by local and by<br />
country governments appreciating the environmental benefits<br />
and often the start of an after-use value chain, but without<br />
sufficient understanding of the requirements for Market Pull.<br />
Often the golden rule for a new polymer was ignored:<br />
Build demand before you build capacity<br />
The last five years also several players came to the market<br />
demonstrating the understanding for the need of a broad<br />
range of applications at a competitive market price. Although<br />
they admit that their cost position will not be optimal in the first<br />
years, they show faith in where they can be when the technology<br />
is at large industrial scale, like 100,000 tonnes/annum plants.<br />
Manufacturing cost quotes of EUR 1.20/kg have already been<br />
given based on which PHA polymer pricing could be between<br />
EUR 1.60 and EUR 2.00/kg in such case.<br />
Prices of the fossil-based polymers PHA competes with<br />
currently run between EUR 1.10 and EUR 2.00/kg. So the<br />
PHA prices are still high in the range, but close enough to get<br />
significant market penetration from a polymer cost perspective.<br />
However, there are also PHA suppliers who are more careful to<br />
indicate where they think the ultimate market price can go.<br />
Although the PHA product family cannot fully substitute<br />
any of the traditional fossil-based polymer families, it can<br />
partly substitute many of them, so the accessible market for<br />
PHA is very large and could become hundreds of kilotonnes<br />
per annum, provided the cost/performance balance is OK.<br />
Depending on the PHA type and grade it can be used for<br />
injection moulding (see figure 3), sheet and film extrusion,<br />
thermoforming, foam, non-wovens, fibers, 3D-printing,<br />
paper coating, glues, binders, adhesives, as additive for<br />
reinforcement or plasticization or as building block in UPRs<br />
for paint or in PUR for foam. Most of these application<br />
developments (see figure 4) are embryonic or early-growth.<br />
PHAs can be used in most thermoplastic and<br />
thermoset market segments<br />
A new value chain is created for PHA polymers. Often, but<br />
not always it’s based on an after-use value chain utilizing<br />
components of a variety of waste streams. Also in other<br />
cases we see that the first few positions in the value chain<br />
(raw material, fermentative polymer production) are taken by<br />
parties who are unfamiliar with the plastics business. During<br />
the last two years about 5 companies have made significant<br />
progress in forming alliances across the entire value<br />
chain in order to accelerate their product and application<br />
developments.<br />
Companies developing PHA manufacturing technology<br />
formed alliances with OEMs, both for thermoplastics<br />
70<br />
Figure 2:<br />
Differences between<br />
several PHA<br />
products.<br />
Melt Temperature (°C)<br />
200<br />
190<br />
180<br />
170<br />
160<br />
150<br />
140<br />
130<br />
120<br />
110<br />
100<br />
0<br />
PHB<br />
PHBD<br />
PHBV<br />
PHBHx<br />
PHBO<br />
PHBHx<br />
PHBO<br />
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20<br />
3HA Content (mol%)<br />
Crystallinity (%)<br />
60<br />
PHB<br />
PHBV<br />
50<br />
PHBO<br />
40<br />
PHBHx<br />
30<br />
PHBOd<br />
20<br />
10<br />
0<br />
0 5 10 15 20 25<br />
3HA Content (mol%)<br />
bioplastics MAGAZINE [<strong>03</strong>/16] Vol. 11 39