An open call issued by an EU-backed project is giving SMEs and other companies a chance to make their bio-based technologies and solutions market-ready.
Spanish plastics technology company AIMPLAS has announced that its reactive extrusion pilot line is ready to produce bio-based nanomaterials for agricultural and food packaging solutions. The pilot line is part of the EU-funded BIOMAC project, whose Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) ecosystem offers the opportunity for technologies and solutions using nano-enabled bio-based materials to be upscaled and prepared for market applications. Following 2 years of development, BIOMAC is now making its services available to European SMEs and other stakeholders in the bio-nanomaterials sector.
The OITB ecosystem offers technological and market-oriented services spanning the entire value chain through four hubs. The pilot plant hub consists of 17 pilot lines developed by BIOMAC for upscaling bio-based technologies. Project partner AIMPLAS runs the 11th pilot line, a reactive extrusion line for polymerizing polylactic acid (PLA) and its copolymers and producing PLA-based nanocomposites.
Added to the pilot plant hub are the validation, value chain assessment, and market uptake hub. Services offered through the validation hub are quality control and characterization, standardization assessment, and process validation and modeling. The value chain hub focuses on sustainability assessment, supply management smoothness, and adherence to circular economy principles. Last, the market uptake hub’s services address a technology’s business, legal, and data handling issues through data and innovation management, health and safety, and regulation analysis services.
As reported in the project blog, the AIMPLAS pilot line is being used in two different test cases within the BIOMAC project. The agricultural sector is developing PLA-based masterbatches with nanoparticles for mulching applications, as well as PLA copolymers for injection molding applications. In the sphere of food packaging solutions, it is being used to develop PLA nanocomposite formulations for blown film applications.
