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JULY/AUGUST 2021 EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION IN AUTOMOTIVE COMPOSITES FINELY TUNED TPOS ENHANCE VEHICLE DESIGN New grades provide performance and cost options to engineering resins PLUSINSIDE PLASTICS ENGINEERING VOLUME 77 NUMBER 7 JULY/AUGUST 2021 10 Faster processes and higher-performing materials make composites an option on more passenger vehicles. Transportation ENHANCED DESIGN Arburg’s fiber-direct compounding process can give molders greater control over part performance and cost. Transportation AN EXQUISITE BALANCE New TPO grades provide attractive performance and cost options to engineering resins. 16 20 GET YOUR OWN! Plastics Engineering keeps plastics industry professionals informed of the latest news and in-depth reporting on state-of-the-art and emerging technologies that impact the R&D and processing of plastics products. This is the magazine every plastics industry professional NEEDS to read. 4spe.org/Subscribe 4 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR COVER STORY www.plasticsengineering.org | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 130 | Design Notes HUMANIZING HIGH-TECH TRAVEL Teague designers aim to make Virgin Hyperloop pods friendly and sustainable. 26 | Analysis ANTEC HIGHLIGHTS AN EVOLVING INDUSTRY Issues of sustainability, inclusion and supply chain partnerships mixed with engineering and technical presentations. 5 | Set Point Economies claimed for chemical recycling process, GM raises EV, AV spend 75 percent, Westfall Technik buys molder CPP Global. 9 | Data Points A snapshot of life-cycle figures for different materials in consumer packaging. 24 | Infographic Plastics use continues to grow in automotive and could be worth $50 billion by 2024. 34 | Tech Focus SCIENTIFIC MOLDING ENSURES REPEATABLE PARTS Creating consistency in injection molded parts requires a detailed process. 47 | Calendar 40 | As I See It HOMEWARD BOUND Garry Craft of Koller Craft talks about reshoring. 48 | Ad/Editorial Index 30 INSIDE PLASTICS ENGINEERING VOLUME 77 NUMBER 7 JULY/AUGUST 2021 44 | New Product News 46 | SPE News 24 2 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | www.plasticsengineering.orgPatrick Toensmeier Editor-in-Chief (203) 777-1474 ptoensmeier@4spe.org Michael Greskiewicz Director, Sales & Advertising (203) 740-5411 mgreskiewicz@4spe.org Ryan Foster Art Director (203) 740-5410 rfoster@4spe.org Sue Wojnicki Director of Communications (203) 740-5420 swojnicki@4spe.org Editorial & Publishing Staff President Jason Lyons CEO Patrick Farrey President-Elect Bruce Mulholland Vice President – Chapters & Secretary ScottEastman Vice President – Business & Finance / Treasurer James Waddell Vice President – Professional Development Pavan Valavala Vice President – Sustainability Conor Carlin Vice President – Member Engagement Lynzie Nebel Vice President – Publications Raymond Pearson Vice President at Large Paul Martin Past President Jaime Gómez SPE 2021-2022 Executive Board Contributing Editors NANCY D. LAMONTAGNE ndlamontagne@gmail.com Nancy D. Lamontagne reports on science, technology and engineering. Topics she covers for Plastics Engineering include thermoforming, blow molding, medical plastics, packaging, and education and career development. ROBERT GRACE bob@rcgrace.com Robert Grace has been in B2B journalism since 1980. He covers design and business for Plastics Engineering and is editor of SPE’s Journal of Blow Molding. Professional memberships include the Industrial Designers Society of America. JENNIFER MARKARIAN technicalwritingsolutions@comcast.net Jennifer Markarian focuses on technology. A chemical engineer, she began her career in product development with Mobil Chemical’s polyethylene group. She is also newsletter editor for SPE’s Palisades-New Jersey Section. MATT BECHTEL mjb@matt-bechtel.com MattBechtel has been covering product and technology developments for Plastics Engineering, along with regulatory issues that affect materials suppliers, converters and brand owners. www.plasticsengineering.org | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 3 PEGGY MALNATI peggy@malnatiandassociates.com Peggy Malnati has over 30 years’ experience covering plastics, composites and automotive. She has organized technical conferences for SPE and served as board member and communications chair for SPE’s Automotive Division. GEOFF GIORDANO geoffgio@verizon.net Geoff Giordano has been a contributor to Plastics Engineering since 2009, covering a range of topics, including additives, infrastructure, flexible electronics, design software, 3D printing and nanotechnology. FROM THE A t a recent party in Manhattan, I met a woman who asked what I do for a living. On telling her that I’m the editor- in-chief of Plastics Engineering magazine, she responded: “What about plastic bottles?” Well, I asked solicitously, what about plastic bottles? They’re polluting the ocean, she replied. And that was that. No discussion necessary. The point she was making with a sound bite and some indignation, was that because messy people and poor waste management are responsible for the unacceptable consequence of plastic bottles and other litter ending up in oceans, plastic bottles are pernicious. Had I discussed this with her, she would likely have described plastic bottles as an ecological threat that should be restricted, even banned. When most people think about plastics, it’s seldom about the benefits they bring to applications and the environment; the lifestyles they enable; convenience and economy they provide; their role in packaging and food safety; and other advantages. Nor do they consider that the industry makes consistent gains in reuse technologies, and with greater emphasis on processes like chemical recycling, could be on the verge of a breakthrough business model in materials supply, in which more polymers are made from recycled plastics, not fossil fuel. This is old hat to people in plastics, of course, but uncharted territory to end-users and, significantly, many regulators. There’s no reason why the average person should know about plastics. But sometimes, this lack of knowledge carries over to regulators. And therein lies a problem. The urge to restrict or ban some plastics appears to be growing in the U.S. The most visible example is retail bag bans, which are in place in some states. Why ban bags? Ostensibly to prevent litter—entirely a people problem—and eliminate a product that many see as nonrecyclable, though bags can be easily recycled. What’s missing is a collection infrastructure. Regulators can be arbitrary about recycling. On July 1, three organizations—Association of Plastic Recyclers, Closed Loop Partners and the Recycling Partnership—responded to a decision by California’s Statewide Commission on Curbside Recycling and Market Development to omit polypropylene bottles, rigid containers, tubs and cups from a Standardized Acceptance List of Recyclable Materials it submitted to CalRecycle, the state’s recycling agency. A brief joint statement by the three said not including “PP on the list underestimates the recycling access, capture and marketability of PP in California and could prove detrimental to PP recycling and waste reduction within the state and nationwide.” In a longer statement the Recycling Partnership noted that PP “is increasingly used to package food and consumer products, and now accounts for 17 pounds of use per household per year.” Adding PP to the recyclable materials list is “an opportunity to catalyze solutions to accelerate the system-wide shift underway for PP, improving the circularity of this material and satisfying an ever- increasing demand for recycled PP in new products and packaging.” The Partnership adds that PP has the potential to become the “third most prominent plastic in the residential stream, just behind PET and HDPE.” Moreover, “recycled PP scrap values have increased tenfold in the past year alone.” No word as to whether the commission will include PP on its recyclables list. But with California in 2011 mandating a 75 percent recycling rate for all materials, but only achieving a 37 percent rate in 2019 (down from 40 percent in 2018 and 50 percent in 2014), it’s apparent that more thinking and discussion are needed. I don’t expect my party acquaintance to change her opinion of plastic bottles, though I bet she uses plenty of them at home and assumes they’re all recycled if disposed of in a recycling bin. What I do want is for regulators to improve their understanding of plastics and recycling technologies and work more constructively with industry to meet the universal need for a clean environment with as little waste as possible. PAT TOENSMEIER Editor-in-Chief ptoensmeier@4spe.org NOW, ABOUT THOSE PLASTICS 4 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | www.plasticsengineering.orgSET POINT The latest entrants in the drive to commercialize a viable chemical recycling process will use a technology developed by Purdue University. Called Low-Pressure Hydrothermal Processing (LP-HTP), it is described as an economical and eco-friendly technology for converting mixed polyolefins into C 4 to C 25 hydrocarbons that can be distilled into clean gasoline and ultra-low- sulfur diesel fuels, according to an abstract of the process published June 15 in the peer-reviewed journal Fuel. The process also produces naphtha, which can be used as a feedstock for chemicals or separated into monomers, specialty solvents and other products. Hasler Ventures LLC of Bonita Springs, Fla., and American Resources Corp., Fishers, Ind., are licensing the patented process from Purdue, which announced its development in 2019. The technique was developed by Linda Wang, the Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor in the university’s Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, and her research team. In a statement announcing the venture, Purdue officials cite the low global recycling rate of plastics and large volumes that end up in landfills or as land and ocean pollution as impetus for development of the technology. Polyolefins account for about 63 percent of total plastics waste, according to some analyses. “The key to solving this problem is to make it economically more attractive to collect and process the plastic waste stream into higher- value products at a significantly lower conversion cost,” says Dan Hasler, chief executive officer of Hasler Ventures, in a statement. “Current methods including incineration, pyrolysis and mechanical recycling have all proven to be ineffective or too costly, both financially and environmentally. They have not been able to draw the required private investment at a scale sufficient to divert the vast majority of the global 350 million tons of plastic waste produced annually from the landfill. “We believe we can demonstrate first at pilot scale that hydrothermal processing is a less- expensive approach to produce fuels from plastic than from crude oil, making it a profitable venture to collect and process plastic, keeping it out of landfills and oceans,” Hasler concludes. The Fuel abstract states that typically polyolefin waste can be transformed into oils using supercritical water liquefaction at high pressure, ≥23 MPa, a technique that entails high capital and energy costs. The LP- HTP hydrothermal method, in contrast, is a low-pressure process, ~2 MPa, that converts polyolefin waste of 50 percent or more polypropylene content into oils with an 87 percent yield, at 450°C (842°F) in 45 minutes. “With this method,” the abstract continues, “up to 190 million tons of fuels can be produced annually from polyolefin waste, resulting in savings of 92 percent of the energy and 71 percent of the [greenhouse gas] emissions compared to conventional methods for producing fuels.” Wang believes that LP-HTP can convert up to 90 percent of polyolefin waste and eventually meet 4 percent of annual demand for gasoline or diesel fuels. Hasler Ventures plans to use American Resources Corp.’s chromatography pilot plant to demonstrate the technology. TRASH TO CASH: RECYCLING PROCESS FLIPS POLYOLEFIN WASTE TO FUELS AND MONOMERS Do you have an article that you would like to submit for Set Point? Contact Pat Toensmeier, Editor- in-Chief, Plastics Engineering, at ptoensmeier@4spe.org. Shorelines covered with plastics trash are promoting efforts by researchers to effectively recycle waste products. Prof. Linda Wang holds sample of oil produced from polyolefin waste by the LP-HTP technology she and her team developed. Images courtesy of Purdue University Correction: A sidebar on p. 12 of the June cover story, IDSA Works to Elevate Women in Design (WID), mistakenly implied that the following statement was made by WID co-chair Hina Shahid: “We need to do more bragging,” she says. “Be assertive …” It was said by WID co-chair Lindsey Maxwell. www.plasticsengineering.org | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 5General Motors Co. is boosting investments in electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) by 75 percent from its initial commitment in March 2020, to $35 billion through 2025. This is the second increase made to its initial investment of $20 billion since November 2020. The higher spend is designed to accelerate GM’s strategy to become the market leader in EVs in North America; global leader in battery and fuel cell technology through the Ultium battery platform and Hydrotec fuel cells; and the first to safely commercialize self-driving technology at scale through its Cruise subsidiary. “GM is targeting annual global EV sales of more than 1 million by 2025, and we are increasing our investment to scale faster because we see momentum building in the United States for electrification, along with customer demand for our product portfolio,” says chair and chief executive officer Mary Barra. The automaker’s announcement comes as good news to Tier 1s and vendors specializing in plastics for the opportunities it will create for component and assembly designs and overall product development. Plastics use is growing steadily as a material of choice in vehicles for the benefits it provides in cost, processability, light weight and design flexibility. Vehicle weight, of course, will be critical to EV range and plastics offers proven compatibility with advanced electronic systems, a hallmark of AV platforms. GM initially shared its vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion four years ago. Factors changing the investment landscape include favorable public reactions to the GMC Hummer EV and Hummer EV SUV, Cadillac Lyriq and Chevrolet Silverado electric pickup; public and private investment in an EV charging infrastructure; and global environmental rules. The new investment figure includes capital, engineering expenses and other development costs, and will help to accelerate the transition to EVs and AVs. GM’s additional investments as well as new collaborations are far-reaching and designed to create greater competitive advantages. They include: » Accelerating Ultium battery cell production in the U.S. GM plans to build two battery cell manufacturing plants by mid-decade to complement the Ultium Cells LLC plants under construction in Tennessee and Ohio. » Commercializing U.S.-made Ultium batteries and Hydrotec fuel cells. In addition to collaborating with Honda to build two EVs using Ultium technology—an SUV for the Honda brand and one for Acura—GM GM UPS THE ANTE IN EV AND AV DEVELOPMENT Tokyo-based materials supplier Toray has opened a Resins Technical Center in its Automotive Center Europe in Neu-Isenburg, Germany, near Munich. The facility supports Toray Resins Europe, which supplies high-performance compounds. The center supports application development by providing technical data, assisting with part design optimization through CAE simulation, and with innovative material and defect analyses and evaluations. The site allows the company to work as well in the expanding area of digital design for resin products by bolstering the long-term durability and mechanical property data it provides about materials. The center additionally increases Toray’s capabilities for advanced simulations of fiber-reinforced parts, notably by factoring in their novel anisotropy. Materials in demand include compounds with high tracking performance and heat-cycle resistance. A key service is support analysis for crack prevention. This addresses such issues as cracking from heat cycling during cooling and heating of molded resin products for insulating high-voltage parts with metal inserts, a problem that is growing with the emergence of electric vehicles. The technical center also collaborates with customers in cooperation with the Automotive Center, whose molding, analysis and assessment capabilities cover the range of Toray’s advanced materials. These include fibers, films, resins and carbon- fiber composites. Toray reinforces technical solutions engineered for European needs by offering construction techniques and structural design features matching its materials and engaging in joint development with European automakers and parts manufacturers. Europe’s automotive sector is accelerating its shift to electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies due to increasingly strict environmental regulations. Toray officials say this means that demand for high- performance resins will keep growing amid an expanding market for electric platforms and communication-related components. TORAY ADDS RESINS TECH CENTER TO AUTOMOTIVE CENTER EUROPE Continued on p. 7 SET POINT GM says favorable reaction to the 2022 Hummer EV and other electric models helped spur its increased investment in EV and AV development. Images courtesy of GM Co. 6 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | www.plasticsengineering.orgASIA | AMERICAS | EUROPE Organised by ASIA July 15-16, 2021 AMERICAS October 7-8, 2021 EUROPE January 20-21, 2022 BENEFITS OF ATTENDING » 2 days of networking, knowledge sharing and ideation across plastics ecosystem » Exhibitors within the plastics supply chain from suppliers to traders » Overcoming challenges during the pandemic and complexities within the recycling industry » Discussions on the best recycling practices www.raceconferences.com Westfall Technik, a global holding company that provides manufacturing solutions for plastics parts in the medical, packaging and consumer goods industries, has acquired Carolina Precision Plastics (CPP) and its wholly owned subsidiaries. Terms of the deal are not disclosed. The acquisition strengthens Westfall’s footprint by adding its first plants in the Southeast U.S., in Mocksville and Asheboro, N.C., as well as one in Kaiping, Guangdong Province, China. “This provides a further supply-chain advantage to Westfall when it comes to serving customers in both the packaging and healthcare sectors,” says MerrittWilliams, chief commercial officer. “CPP’s North Carolina plants are ideally located to serve a multitude of brand owners in the surrounding area.” CPP, which runs about 100 injection molding machines in its three facilities, also brings expertise in secondary services, such as high- volume, fully automated assembly and advanced decorating capabilities. The molder’s three plants cover approximately 335,000 square feet of manufacturing space. “This is the next step in creating a world-class molding and tooling business that is built on a strong culture and customer service,” says Brian Jones, Westfall’s founder and chief executive officer and former president and CEO of molder Nypro. (For an interview with Brian Jones about his plans to expand Westfall Technik, see article in April Plastics Engineering, p. 38.) A North American leader in the injection molding of heavy-wall PET jars, CPP also operates an innovative collaborative design center and has a strong sustainability profile. The firm is a significant user of recycled resins and biopolymers in products. “This deal strengthens our presence in the fast- moving consumer goods segment,” adds Mark Gomulka, Westfall’s chief operating officer. “CPP Global is a packaging supplier to leading personal care and beauty companies, such as L’Oréal, Estée Lauder and Burt’s Bees, among others.” WESTFALL TECHNIK ADDS MOLDER CPP GLOBAL signed a memorandum of understanding to supply Ultium batteries and Hydrotec fuel cells to Wabtec Corp., which is developing the world’s first 100 percent battery- powered locomotive. » GM will also supply Hydrotec fuel cells to Navistar, which is developing hydrogen- powered heavy trucks to launch in 2024. The automaker plans to launch a third generation of the fuel cells with greater power density and lower costs by mid- decade. GM manufactures the fuel cells in Michigan, in a joint venture with Honda. » GM plans to deliver 30 new EVs by 2025 globally, with two-thirds available in North America. Part of the added investment will be allocated to the North America plan for new electric commercial trucks and other products that take advantage of the design opportunities and flexibility enabled by the Ultium platform. In addition, GM will add U.S. assembly capacity for EV SUVs. » Cruise, GM’s majority owned subsidiary, is the first company to receive permission from California regulators to provide a driverless AV passenger service to the public. Cruise was also selected as the exclusive provider of AV rideshare services to Dubai and is working with Honda to develop an AV testing program in Japan. » GM Financial will provide a multiyear, $5 billion credit facility for Cruise to scale its Cruise Origin fleet. Developed in partnership with Honda and Cruise, the Cruise Origin will be built at GM’s Factory ZERO Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center starting in early 2023. GM, p. 6 GM is supplying Hydrotec fuel cells to Navistar for use in a hydrogen-powered heavy truck that’s slated for launch in 2024. www.plasticsengineering.org | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 7Next >