Blending, Forming And Mould Development Of Biomass Cushion Packaging Material

The biomass cushion packaging products, mainly made of plant fiber and starch with some additives and foaming agent through a special process, have the advantages of wide range of sources of raw material, simple preparation process, low cost, no environmental pollution in the full life cycle. Nowadays, this kind of green packaging materials has been developed as an ideal substitution of usual industrial packaging. At present, the research about its material formulation and forming mechanism are still research challenges both at home and abroad.There are two key problems restricting its industrial development at present. Firstly, improving fiber content can reduce costs, ensure mechanical properties of products, but it will result that materials’ rheological property decreases and forming becomes difficult. Secondly, to improve the material’s buffer performance requires an ideal microstructure, which brings a lot of challenges to the mechanism of forming process. According to the bottleneck problems, three aspects of this project are carried study on--"material formulation and process, forming mechanism, forming mould".Firstly is the research about material formulation and compounding process. The main raw materials, such as fiber, starch, water, filling and so on, are further researched on the reaction mechanism in the material forming process and roles played in the material’s physical and chemical properties. Based on the theory of these studies, material formulation and related process are optimized. Such as the alkaline treatment on straw fiber, the plasticizing of corn starch, the replacement of filling, the water reducing process, these optimizations can not only improve the buffer performance of material, but also bring an increase of the fiber content and success rate of material products.Followed is the forming process. In this paper, the biomass cushion material’s forming process is divided into three stages:stage of paste, foam forming stage, product and subsequent processing stages. In the stage of paste, the rheological properties of paste are researched according the pipeline transport conditions and "Casson Model". The mold flow analysis of paste are made in the foam molding stage, which studied the affect order of fiber, water, sodium lignosulphonate, starch through a three factor and four level orthogonal experiment. At last, the reverse back mechanism is discussed in the product and subsequent processing stages. At last is the development of new kind mould. According to the forming characteristics of biomass material, the performance requirements of injection mold are summarized and the main defects related to existing mold are investigated. A new set of laminated nest mould is introduced in this paper. The design and improvement scheme is detailed through the study of the actual use effect.Combining with the actual production problems and existing research foundation, the research are mainly focus on three aspects--"material formulation and process, forming mechanism, forming mould". For the improvement of material formulation, the process optimization and the promotion of material performance, these new explorations can provide more theoretical basis and technical solution, and also, for the development of equipment related and the industrialization promotion of new materials, will provide more support.