Ecoflex c1200

A commercial grade of PHBHHx (3-HHx unit content = 11 mol%, X151A, ©KANEKA Biodegradablepolymer™ PHBH, Kaneka Co., Osaka, Japan) was used in this study. PBAT (Ecoflex C-1200, BASF), PLA (Ingeo 10361D, Nature Works, Minnetonka, MN, USA), and PBS (Bionolle 1020MD, Showa Denko, Tokyo, Japan) were used as obtained. Each blend (PHBHHx/PBAT, PHBHHx/PLA, PHBHHx/PBS) was prepared by a melt extrusion process using TEM26SS (Toshiba Machine, Numazu, Japan) at 140 °C with 80 rpm for 2 min to obtain each blended pellets. Each blended pellets were pulverized by freeze pulverization using a SPEX SamplePre 6750 Freezer/Mill (SPEX) to obtain blend powders. The average particle size of each blend powder was measured using a Microtruc MT3300EXII (Nikkiso, Tokyo, Japan). Sheets of the blends at 20 μm of thickness were also prepared by a T-die cast extrusion process at 140 °C for 8 min using a Labo-Plastmill Model 30C150 (Toyoseiki, Nagano, Japan). The data of each bending elastic modulus was cited from the previous study [10 ].

Two types of polymer resins were used during the investigation. The first one was poly(lactic) PLA Ingeo 3251D from NatureWorks (Minnetonka, MN, USA), MFI = 30–40 g/10 min (190 °C, 2.16 kg). This type of PLA is intended for injection molding applications. The second polymer type was polybutylene adipate terephthalate PBAT foil grade Ecoflex C1200 type from BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany), MFI = 2.7–4.5 g/10 min (190 °C, 2.16 kg). For the purpose of reactive extrusion process we used the epoxy functionalized chain extender (CE), in our case it was random styrene-acrylonitrile-glycidyl methacrylate terpolymer type SAG-008 from the company Fine-Blend (Shanghai, China), material was supplied by DSKH GmbH. Composite reinforcement consists of flax fiber fabric, we used the natural flax. The density of the used plain weave fabric was 260 g/m².