BP Chemical Meets Packaging Challenges
for New Foaming Gel Product
A BP chemical, dimethyl-2,6-naphthalene
dicarboxylate (NDC), used in
making polyethylene naphthalate (PEN),
enabled the development of transparent,
plastic aerosol packaging that withstands
high pressure, protects against moisture and
oxygen and prevents bottle colouration.
The cosmetics company that developed
this product, Lake Consumer Products,
Inc., was looking for packaging that
could deliver their unique gel-to-foam
formula. They wanted a cleansing product
that lathered without the use of a
sponge or washcloth, thereby protecting
against skin agitation and making it easier
to use and apply. This required aerosol
packaging that could withstand pressurized
content in a variety of environments.
Whatever the consumer might do, from
throwing it into the trunk of a car in the
heat of summer to dropping it down the
stairs, the bottle had to remain safe and
stable.
In addition to these requirements associated with pressurized
content, Lake Consumer Products, Inc., was looking
for a bottle that would have an appealing design and
the ability to see the colourful gel inside.
This required a unique plastic bottle.
“It was important for the packaging
of this product to match the
groundbreaking formula it contained,”
said Mike Kermendy, director of marketing
for Lake Consumer Products, Inc. “So
we developed the inverted plastic bottle
to position the product as unique and
make it easy for people to spot Beyond
Fresh Intimates when it’s on the shelf at
the local grocery store, drug store or mass
retailer.”
PEN met both the strength requirements
of aerosol and the transparency
requirements of the design. In addition,
PEN has very low sorption levels, which
means the contents do not readily transfer
to the wall of the bottle. Therefore,
the colourful gel inside do not alter the
colour of the bottle.
PEN also has excellent barrier properties
against moisture and oxygen. This maintains the
quality of the product over longer period of time. All these
qualities made PEN an ideal fit for this type of packaging.
Waste-by-Rail System
Since the late 1980’s, the Sanitation
Districts of Los Angeles County, in
conjunction with other public agencies,
have been studying means to address the
projected shortfall in local solid waste
disposal capacity. Currently, nearly all
refuse in Los Angeles County is transported
to disposal sites in the metropolitan
area by truck. However, as public
opposition to setting new or expanding
existing disposal facilities near urban
areas has grown, sites farther from the
Los Angeles Basin have become more
desirable, despite the transport costs
associated with longer transport distances.
For some sites, such as the Mesquite
Regional Landfill in Imperial
County, rail transport is an efficient
means to transport refuse to remote disposal
sites. Transitioning to remote disposal
of refuse that involves rail transport
requires new infrastructure be developed.
This concept of rail transport
of refuse, which includes an integrated
system of local and remote infrastructure,
is called “Waste-by-Rail.”
Regional System
The Sanitation Districts have taken the
lead role in implementing the Waste-by-
Rail System, a remote disposal program
for Los Angeles County. The Waste-by-
Rail System will provide long term disposal
capacity to replace local landfills
as they reach capacity and close. The
starting point of the Waste-by-Rail System
will be Materials Recovery Facilities
(MRFs) or transfer stations located
throughout Los Angeles County. Residual
waste from the MRFs or transfer
stations will be transported via rail to
remote landfills for disposal.
(Source: http://www.lacsd.org)
(Reproduced from Eco-Echoes Vol. 6
Issue-3, ICPE News Letter.)
Let's Beach this Bad
Idea on Litter
"Irresponsible human behaviour cannot be
addressed by banning products in society."
If popular disposable products are
banned, they'll just be replaced with alternate
ones. Greater enforcement and
education are better ideas.
Jean-Michel Cousteau (son of the famed
ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, is the
founder of the California-based Oceans
Future Society) comments as below:
Seeking to reduce beach litter, efforts
are under way in Los Angeles, Orange
and Ventura counties to ban various
plastic products. That's like banning
food because people are overweight.
Battenfeld Tests Ceramic Screw for Large-Scale Production
Ceramic screws unrivalled
Wherever resins with maximum
filler content are injection-moulded,
screws and barrels must be
extremely abrasion and wearresistant.
With such composite
materials, conven-tional screws
and barrels quickly reach their
limits and soon show signs of
massive wear. Industrial ceramics
are the only materials which
can satisfy such extreme demands
for wear-resistance as
well as resistance to heat and
temperature fluctuations. Moreover,
they show excellent corrosion
resistance to both acids and
alkaline media.
Ceramics, however, are expensive, and therefore their
use only makes sense if the char-acteristic advantages of
these materials in terms of longer service life are exploited.
The use of ceramics requires - as is the case with all types
of materials - a design to suit the material. For example,
tensile stress must be minimized and converted into compression
load, or complex shapes must be broken down
into several simple modules.
Therefore a number of new solutions especially for
the use of ceramics in injection moulding and extruder
screws have been developed in the course of a joint "ceramic
screw" project during the last few years. Among
other things, bonding and joining techniques had to be
optimized, since injection molding screws with ceramic
modules cannot be produced
from a single part. The project
partners also had to find new
ways of producing metal-ceramic
composites.
Successful test runs
As a result of comprehensive
FEM simulations, tribological
studies and extensive test series,
the first corrosion and wearresistant
ceramic-metal screws
that are suitable for commercial
use have now been produced.
"We are extremely gratified by
the progress made in this
project", Battenfeld engineers
comment. "Ceramic screws will soon be ready for commercial
production. Our next task will be to further improve
the adhesion between metal and ceramics, so that
we can offer hybrid components with a long service life".
State of Hesse Cooperation Award for the "ceramic
screw"
The criterion for granting the State of Hesse Cooperation
Award is outstanding coopera-tion between industrial enterprises
and research institutions, utilizing scientific
knowl-edge for long-term entrepreneurial success. This
has been practiced in an extremely suc-cessful way in the
joint "ceramic screw" project, hence this project won the
third prize in the recent State of Hesse Cooperation Award
contest.
....contd.
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