The Application Technology of Plastic Made from Non-Exhaustible Resources

Abstract

The cost of typical material of biomass plastic, Polylactic acid (PLA) made from corn was successfully reduced in 1980s. Cargill Dow LLC has built mass production plant of PLA and started to manufacture since 2002. The biomass plastic has put into a practical use of several bodies of electronic equipments and office equipments instead of the former usages, such as multi-films for agriculture and packaging materials. However, to really adopt the biomass plastic material, especially for multifunction device and printer, there are some considerable problems, which are not only an increase in content and cost reduction of biomass plastic, but also basic properties and parts performance necessary for functioning compared to plastic made of petroleum. The following composition introduces details of the required machine property of multifunction device and printer, and also the biomass plastic technology that has been adopted recently.