Creating Thermoplastic Elastomer Compounds With Sustainable Content

Given the wide variety of sustainability approaches our automotive, consumer products and building and construction customers are pursuing, our TPE product development efforts are similarly diverse. Incorporation of sustainable content – raw materials that reduce both the embodied and operational impact on the environment across the entire product lifecycle – adds to the complexity, with limitless options and combinations. Sustainable content options include:

Recycled content. Post-consumer or post-industrial recycled (PCR or PIR) content minimizes the use of virgin petroleum-based materials, contributing toward carbon footprint reduction, while promoting a circular economy by keeping still-useful materials out of landfills.

Bio-based content. Made from biologically-derived feedstocks, these materials reduce dependency on petroleum-based plastic. They potentially, though not necessarily, reduce carbon footprint while demonstrating circularity through their recyclability and use of renewable resources.

Renewable content. Using mass balance protocols, renewable content also decreases reliance on petroleum-based products and support a circular economy by reintroducing materials back into the processing stream. Their performance and processing profiles are identical to virgin petroleum equivalents, and these sustainable materials can be used in regulated applications such as food contact and medical devices.

Carbon sequestering content. Carbon sequestering additives or carbon negative additives place an additional emphasis on carbon footprint reduction. These materials actively lessen the environmental impact of plastics by keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. 

Formulating TPEs with sustainable content can be extremely complex, and customers adopting these sustainable materials will need to weigh the environmental benefits against any property, processing or usage limitations. Let Teknor Apex be your partner in this process. Because TPE recipes consist of several ingredients — and each ingredient has several “sustainable” alternatives — we work with our customers to determine the best combination of raw materials to meet their unique sustainability goals, cost targets and performance requirements. Our dedicated team of experts has decades of experience in this area and can help them minimize the limitations and develop new custom compounds and processes to make the most out of the sustainability potential of these emerging materials.

Optimizing Plastic Processes

Plastics processing, like many manufacturing operations, can needlessly waste energy and materials, adversely affecting both the sustainability of elastomeric products and the bottom line. Teknor Apex helps our customers improve their operational sustainability efforts by optimizing the energy and materials efficiency injection molding, extrusion, blow-molding and thermoforming processes. Meaningful sustainability strategies include:

Cycle Time Reduction. Based on a deep understanding of thermoplastic elastomer processing and the use of sophisticated simulation tools, our experts can help customers reduce the cycle times of a given component by optimizing the interplay between the material itself, the tooling and the processing equipment. Faster cycle times inherently conserve energy — and produce economic benefits.

Material Usage Reduction. Our experts can help customers reduce scrap and overall material usage by designing compounds to suit the process, changing part design to eliminate waste and incorporating scrap or trim back into the manufacturing process. Our team has also assisted customers with the design and setup of in-line regrind and recycling processes.

Establish New Process: For customers converting from other thermoset elastomers or conventional TPEs to emerging materials containing high levels of sustainable content, our TPE experts offer all the support needed to establish a new process — from design and prototyping to scale-up and production equipment requirements.