Abstract:

In the 2017/2018 academic year, in the subject "Eco-efficient Materials" of the second year of the “Master en Ingeniería, Procesado y Caracterización de Materials Degree, specific tasks have been programmed. These tasks are proposals from companies and factories that demand a specific profile for the new postgraduates, where they need to know how to manipulate and process materials. These knowledge and the aptitudes have to be integrated into the training program of the Master degree.

In the last year of studies, the students are able to analyse, propose and develop alternatives to face day-to-day problems, by the use of the processing equipment and analytical instruments. This aptitude is reached thanks to the knowledge acquired in the first course of the master degree and the ability to develop basic learning methodologies.

The main objective of the work is that students are able to develop a biodegradable polymer, a material with prospects of being highly demanded in the near future. The material consists of an optimized proportion of wheat starch and glycerol (72 % wheat starch/28% glycerol). For this, they carried out a bibliographic study for optimizing the plasticizer content. Once optimized, the material was processed in conditions of minimum energy consumption using the plastic transformation equipment. Then, they were able to scale the manufacturing parameters to one of the interested companies of the area. Finally, they analysed the thermoplastic starch by means of instrumental techniques of the laboratory of polymers, such as: FTIR, MFI, DSC, TGA and the mechanical behaviour, hardness Shore D and Charpy’s impact. The characterization was made for verifying the properties of the material, which was demanded by the company.

The development and work program applied and carried out by the students was the following: physical mixing of starch/glycerol using a mixer, extrusion, milling and subsequent injection of the test specimens. Then, the mechanical, thermal and chemical characterization and evaluation of the properties were performed.

The obtained thermoplastic starch showed mechanical properties within the intervals demanded by the company and an improved processability, by decreasing the temperature of injection, respect to other formulations obtained from the Web of Science database. These characteristics are important requirement since it allows for lower energy consumption, an essential step for implementing Cleaner Production processes in the industry.

Keywords:

Formulations, plasticized starch, pilot plant, biodegradable polymers, instrumental analysis.