We’re going to go back to our ABCs today and we’re going to talk about how PA 11 is advanced, bio-based, and circular.

Advanced

So first off, we’re going to talk about advanced materials because first and foremost, PA 11 is an advanced polymer. When we talk about advanced, we’re not just talking about 3D printing. For PA 11, it can be used for molding, films, extrusion, and powder coating applications. And the unique crystalline structure yields an impressive balance of properties that I will get into in these next few slides. So first, when we think about PA 11 versus PA 12, we have a 100% bio-based aspect that I’ll get into when we get into the b and our ABCs of materials. We also have superior elasticity, ductility, and impact resistance.  

We’re here at Endeavor 3D’s booth to talk about the excellent powder bed fusion processing characteristics. So let’s get into some of these advanced properties that I referenced in my last slide. So on this slide here, you’ll see your stress versus strain curve where we’re looking at both x y, and z direction properties since this is for 3D printing and we all know that there are differences between your x, y, and your z direction.

So you can see here that PA 11 outperforms your PA 12 when it comes to elasticity, ductility, and elongation at break. The next property I’m going to show you here is your stress over several cycles where we can see how PA 11 has superior fatigue resistance when compared to PA 12. And I want to emphasize again that these are all on 3D printed parts.

The last property I’m going to talk about, which I think is the most impressive property of our PA 11 material, is the impact resistance. So this is PA 11, purely a polymer, with no additives added. You can see here whether at room temperature or negative 30 Celsius that with both the z direction and the x y, PA 11 doesn’t break with a 4-joule hammer.

As you can see your polyamide 12 (PA 12) does not have the same performance, especially at these lower temperatures. This is why PA 11 is often a material of choice in automotive applications, where you need that improved impact resistance for this to work in your car. So hopefully, I’ve now convinced you that PA 11 is first and foremost an advanced material.

Bio-Based

So next, we’re going to get into the bio-based aspect which is something we’re all excited about with sustainability, especially that being a key theme at NPE this year. So when we talk about bio-based, a lot of people immediately think of corn but PA 11 is different.

It comes from your castor plant. From the plant, we get a castor bean. This is crushed into castor oil and fertilizer cake to become our polyamide 11 polymer that you’re probably familiar with in either the resin or the powder form. So with the castor plant, this is a really exciting crop. It doesn’t compete with food, so you’re not worrying about taking land away from feeding the world or any of those aspects that usually people ask about when you think about a bio-based material.

It also doesn’t require deforestation to plant this crop. It’s highly profitable for the farmers in this region. In my next few slides, I’ll get into what Arkema has been doing with the farmers through our Pragati initiative in the Gujarat region of India, where this is a high cash crop for the farmers. None of the beans get wasted. It’s either crushed into fertilizer cake that goes back into agriculture or into the oil that we use as our starting block for amino 11 into polyamide 11.

The last point is that the Gujarat region has some of the most porous soil where you can’t grow anything. So it’s not like we’re taking soil usage away from another crop to make castor. So a lot of these points I already touched on in our bio-based, and I’ll get into a lot of these in the next few slides too. I think one key thing to also note here is that we take advantage of the monsoon rain cycle. We’ve helped the farmers in this region use less water.

One of the main benefits is the biogenic benefit, where instead of having your linear model where you’re taking crude oil extraction that causes permanent depletion, you get polymer based on fossil fuel where CO2 goes into the atmosphere if it’s not recycled. We have a circular model where we’re first taking carbon from the atmosphere to grow the crop and then the crop becomes the polyamide 11. C02 goes back into the atmosphere to be used again for crop protection based on this circular model assuming it has not been recycled.

But when we get into the c in our ABCs, I’ll talk about the circular aspects in the sense of recycling our new Agiplast acquisition. So why do we care about that biogenic effect and what does that mean for you? Well, when we think about LCA, which I feel is the big buzzword when it comes to your sustainability aspects. What does that mean for your raw materials? Our polyamide 11 material, taking into account the biogenic carbon and Arkema’s biomethane energy contract that we signed early last year, has a 70% reduction in your carbon dioxide kilograms, equivalent per kilogram when compared to fossil fuel polyamides.

So that means we have less than 2 KG CO2 equivalent per kilogram value, and we’re working to lower that by an additional 50% by 2030. So one of the things I also hinted at was our Pragati initiative, where we’re working with the farmers in the Gujarat region of India to make this a more sustainable crop. The goal is to help them with their agricultural practices. This was launched in 2016. BASF is also one of the founding members of this initiative. So with the farmers, as of September of last year, we’ve worked with 78,100 farmers in the region, which sounds like a lot, but there’s still a lot more work for us to do.

Each of the farmers in this region has a small field of land that they’re growing castor. We’re not done with our efforts here but we’ve done a lot already. So with this program, we’ve been able to help them get 45% higher yields in their caster compared to the government rates. They also are lowering their water usage by 21%, taking advantage of that monsoon cycle. A lot of great benefits from this program. We’re now starting to use apps to further outreach and work with other people in the Gujarat region.

Circular

Now we’ve talked about how PA 11 is an advanced material. It’s bio-based. The last c I’m going to leave you with today is Circular. With Circular, in June of 2021, Arkema acquired Agipost. This is an advanced polymer recycling company out of Italy. And what they do is they take scrap polymers and turn those into new advanced polymers. So now, when you’re thinking about your bio-based materials, it doesn’t have to end there. When we think about 3D printing, that can mean using all of that unused powder that you can no longer use after a certain point and giving it a new life in a new polymer. This just explains our circular economy outside of 3D printing.

We work with materials manufacturers. We work with polymer processors and also end consumers. So as part of this program, we work with everybody and we want to take back your material to give it a new life. Since this is a 3D printing section, you will not see these recycled polymers in 3D printing again. Instead, they’ll be used in injection molding and extrusion applications which is some of what we’re showing here. And this just shows the way our Virtue Cycle program is adopted.

We have customers that are solely collecting their material. We have customers who are buying recycled products and then we have some customers where it’s a full loop, in terms of the circularity.

So thank you all for listening today about Arkema’s ABC of Materials. Hopefully, I’ve left you with the easy message that PA 11 is advanced, bio-based, and circular. So thank you.