General aim of the project is to reduce energy consumption and carbon fingerprint in plastic industry. Thermoplastic polymers such as Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP) being initially manufactured as granulate underwent afterwards different re-shaping under re-heating to final articles. Enormous energy is consumed at such re-heating, very often energy costs contribute 50% and more to the total self-cost of final article.
These energy losses are especially big at such mass manufacturing as plastic bottles industry. First so-called “preforms” are manufactured from PET granulate and then preforms are blown to the different final plastic bottles under the heating, normally by Infrared (IR) lamps. Energy consumed at this stage determines the self-cost of final bottle. Most of energy lost because of transparency of polymer for IR irradiation. To reduce energy losses different “re-heaters” are applied, such as graphite and mineral pigments which have higher IR adsorption than polymer. However, these re-heaters are effective only at high concentration and change optical and mechanical properties of polymer. Polymer is no more transparent which very important feature for plastic bottles. Customers mostly want to see what is inside. Requested high content of such re-heaters make bottle also expensive.
A Project was suggested to develop new cheap plasmonic nanoceramic particles which are effective as IR re-heaters even at extremely low concentration in ppm (particles per million) range and thus does not change appearance of polymer and do not remarkably contribute to self-costs. To approach this goal, it was necessary to develop new approach based on Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) technology. Such technology should be ecologically friendly (free of toxic and corrosive precursors and exhausts) and give clean product free of toxic admixtures, while final application concerns to food containers/bottles.
