Supporting the eyewear industry going green with bio-composites

I have recently been contacted by a R&D engineer from a “global leader in eyewear” industry to know my thoughts on bio-composites: the state of the art and currently applications. Here you have the summary of this very interesting collaboration.

The eyewear industry make mainly use of synthetic polymers, such as Polyamide 12 and its derivatives and of cellulose acetate. Actually, there are niche production of carbon fibre composite frames too;, as it can be seen in the example below. Both “hand crafted” and mass production solutions for the frame exist.

Example of carbon fibre frame taken from the web

Example of carbon fibre frame taken from the web

However, bio-composites are not meant to replace the carbon fibre. IMHO that is good, there will always be someone willing to spend extra money for a carbon-look stuff. The company is studying how to go green. They are studying how to replace all the synthetic plastics with bio-composite , i.e. composites having both reinforcement and matrix coming from renewable resources.

Luckily, both for me and the company, someone did spend some time on the subject. In fact, BIOCOMP, has recently ended a 3 year project called New Classes of Engineering Composite Materials from Renewable Resources. The final report can be downloaded from the Box.net widget. It is definitely worth a look.

In brief, BIOCOMP has investigated an alternative way to PA12 for glasses frames: flax natural fiber filled PLA compounds seem to be a viable option. Go to page 13 of the document for more details.

In a broader prospective, the document lists some other interesting achievements: natural fibre furan prepegs for automotive/sandwich panel are the most promising to me.

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