FILLED SEMI-CRYSTALLINE THERMOPLASTICS IN MAJOR APPLIANCES - TRENDS FOR BORSTAR PRODUCTS WITHIN THE MAJOR APPLIANCES INDUSTRY

摘要

Household refrigerator/freezers are the most popular major appliance in the world. In the past years, many attempts to replace the Polystyrene multilayer liner in the refrigerator by semi-crystalline thermoplastics have been performed without success. The reason for this attempts were the poor chemically stability and the high permeability of the current materials used as inner liner materials. When Polystyrenes are exposed to stress and to a liquid or vapour chemical agent, they will fail in short times. This phenomenon is known as environmental stress cracking (ESC). Semi-crystalline thermoplastics show this not and are therefore in the best way suitable for inner liners of refrigerator. The failures were mainly related to the poor thermoformability of semi-crystalline thermoplastics. The inner liner is one of the refrigerator components that have seen substantial improvements in performance and reduction in cost due to the use of semi-crystalline thermoplastics. This application currently accounts for 750 million pounds of plastics annually in the global manufacturing of refrigerators. After a strong material development to increase the thermoforming stability and an extensive test program, today Borealis can offer now a new Borstar material which is suitable for the thermoforming of big inner liners.