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Volume 8, Issue 6 (Suppl) J Bioremediat Biodegrad, an open access journal
ISSN:2155-6199 Biopolymers & Bioplastics 2017
October 19-20, 2017
October 19-20, 2017 San Francisco, USA
7th International Conference and Exhibition on
Biopolymers and Bioplastics
From lab to an industrial scale Sulzer PLA technology
Fabio Codari, Sven Cammerer, Ulla Trommsdorff and Emmanuel Rapendy
Sulzer Chemtech Ltd., Switzerland
In the last years, PLA has gained significant market attention, with several large brand owners announcing evaluation of this
material or even launching new solutions based on PLA as a sustainable alternative to existing fossil-based plastics in packaging
and thermoplastic applications. Bio-based, biodegradable, versatile, temperature resistant and suitable for food contact applications:
PLA offers a variety of advantages and benefits. But, it is also a sensitive material requiring special conditions during production and
processing. With regards to temperature control and shear, advanced technology is required to obtain a product with high crystallinity
and molecular weight, combined with low residual monomer and yellowness index, allowing the material to match and even exceed
technical expectations and standards set by the existing thermoplastics. Sulzer has developed a flexible and robust PLA production
technology to enable PLA producers to enter the biopolymer market at customizable scale. The process was scaled-up from lab scale
bench tests and extensive pilot testing to large production capacities and it is nowadays state-of-the-art in PLA technology. The Sulzer
PLA technology is discussed in the first part of this work with focus on process design and the Sulzer proprietary key equipment. In
the second part, the scale up of the ROP process from laboratory to industrial scale is presented.
Biography
Fabio Codari is a graduate of the Politecnico di Milano in chemical engineering and holds a PhD in polymer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
of Zurich (ETHZ). He has been working for Sulzer Chemtech for six years in various R&D, sales and application development positions. His main fields of expertise
are polymerization, devolatilization and upgrade polymer processes.
Fabio Codari et al., J Bioremediat Biodegrad 2017, 8:6 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2155-6199-C1-011