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Resins Pilot Line (FH-WKI, DE)
PL12
valmas
DESCRIPTION UPGRADE & MODIFICATION PLAN
DESCRIPTION

In PL12, monomers from PL3, such as sorbitol, succinic acid, glycerol, ethylene glycol and sugar alcohols will be used as starting materials for bio-based polyesters resins. For UV-curing applications, bio-based itaconic acid or acrylic acid will also be incorporated. The resins will be synthesized by azeotropic polycondensation reactions. These polymer resins will be used as starting materials for UV-curing materials in additive manufacturing (PL15) and printing ink application (PL16). In addition, starting from these polyesters, bio-based polyurethane dispersions will be synthesized that can also be used for printing ink applications. Both types of polymer resins can also be synthesized with different amounts of nanoparticles, such as nanocellulose or nanolignin. UV-curing of samples, as well as DLP and SLA-machine for additive manufacturing is available.


These types of bio-based resins can be applied in a variety of applications in the coatings field, such as printing inks, adhesives, wood coatings, additive manufacturing.


The materials will be synthesized in reactors on lab-scale (up to 2 kg), small pilot scale (up to 4 kg) and after upgrade in a medium size pilot scale (up to 25 kg) in double-walled steel reactors.

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UPGRADE & MODIFICATION PLAN

The upgrade undertaken in the course of BIOMAC project is a 30 L double walled steel reactor. This reactor allows for the synthesis of up to 25 kg of polymer resins on a medium size pilot scale. The set-up of the reactor was chosen to be very versatile so that a wide range of polymer resins can be synthesized ranging from polyester resins (polyester polyols, unsaturated polyesters, UV-curing polyesters) and polyurethane dispersions up to emulsion polymers (polyvinyl acetate, polyacrylate, polystyrene). Solvent and reagents can be added by two separate dosage units and three different stirring geometries can be using depending on the polymer resins being synthesized. In addition, reactions can be performed under air, nitrogen and vacuum conditions. Due to this size of the reactor, scale up into semi- and full industrial scale is facilitated.