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Polyamides, the largest engineering polymer group
is in the midst of some exciting developments. The first consists
of an increasing demand from China due to higher growth of it's
automotive industry. Other applications, such as appliances, communication
equipments, etc. will also increase the demand of Polyamides in
China. In fact, experts believe that China's Polyamide consumption
is expected to surpass that of North America and even Europe by
the end of this decade. It is expected that the Polyamide component
of Chinese cars will increase significantly, leading to an average
growth of over 20% for Polyamides in China for this segment. The
overall growth of Polyamides in China will at least be twice the
average global growth of about 5-6%.
A shift is taking place in the automotive industry where the usage
of Engineering polymers such as Polyamide or PC etc will be preferred
over the commodity polymer like PP because of high mechanical properties
at higher temperatures. An auto part like battery when changed to
42KV from the existing 12KV, would demand all the under hood plastic
parts to withstand higher temperatures. Polyamide producers are
concentrating on these new exciting applications.
Another application that is expected to grow well in the next decade,
is the usage of Nylon films to improve barrier properties. China
again is expected to play a very important role in this development
because of packaging required by a very large population, living
in the vastness of the country. Both BOPA (Bi Oriented Poly Amide)
and coextruded film with Polyolefins is likely to grow well.
The technical developments in the compounding are likely to provide
faster results. Some of them showing good promise are:
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Nano composites |
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Alloys with PP or other Polyolefins |
It is expected that some of the existing problems with the above
products such as inferior impact strength of nano composites or
significant reduction in the flexural modulus of the PP alloys will
either be completely eliminated or at least will be resolved to
some extent. Any improvement in these products will hasten the growth
of Polyamide.
Polymer producers are developing newer processes with an intention
of reducing manufacturing costs. They are also involved in improving
the rheological properties by modification of structure. The impact
of developments in manufacturing processes is expected only after
a few years.
Most of the experts in the Polyamide industry are very optimistic
that these developments will definitely help in achieving better
growth over the next few years globally.
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