Rising raw material prices and the continuously increasing dynamic market situation in the plastics processing industry requires a permanent improvement of the product quality and the resource efficiency. Plastics engineers and scientists on PCCL meet these challenges with practice-relevant research.
On the one hand, the PCCL deals with the further improvement of processing methods as the physical foaming in extrusion with inert gases and the other with the improvement and development of tailor-made material formulations for specific applications. Thereby, the PCCL covers the whole development chain, ranging from the manufacturing of small quantities to the characterization of the properties of the material formulations and the production of samples with laboratory and semi- industrial processing machines. Besides the development of tailor-made material formulations the development of a basic knowledge of the physical foaming is one of the main research activities. Our focus is here the development of new methods for the lay-out of extrusion lines and the improvement of material formulations for physical foaming. Particular attention is paid to the transfer of the gained knowledge from our lab lines to the production lines of our industrial partners. Additionally the PCCL offers the opportunity to perform material and process trials in our well-equipped laboratory with our lab-scale production machines such as the multi-layer flat sheet extrusion line. Exemplary, some of our research fields are listed below
- Optimization of strategies for the processing of bio-based and biodegradable polymers
- Development of biodegradable films for packaging
- Development of halogen-free flame retardant polyolefin compounds
- Optimization of tool concepts to improve the foam quality
- Systematic development of material formulations for the physical foaming
- Development of a deaper understanding of the phase separation in foam extrusion
