UltraFibre project making progress

The British Plastics Federation (BPF) is engaged in a number of European FP7 projects, one of which is the UltraFibre Project. The project itself has now passed the halfway stage and has less than 18mths left to run.

The project itself aims to build upon some earlier research work, undertaken by both industry and academia. Previous research work focussed upon processing of the already decorticated natural fibre and developments of matrix and composite formulation.  UltraFibre takes a further step back to the fibre production itself and focuses on improving the quality of the fibre raw materials. 

As a reminder, the project's objectives are as follows:

 
- A scalable, economic, continuous, clean- fluidsonics technology to deliver tonnage quantities of high quality fibre

- Reduced standard deviation in tensile test data by 30% of the fibres in comparison with conventional retting techniques, indicating improved fibre quality and consistency.

- Integration of a Soft Plasma fibre treatment process giving increases in mechanical properties compared with the untreated fibre.

- Commercial thermoplastic and thermosetting composites in targeted end-user applications.

Further details can be found in the project brochure here or via the website here

A more detailed flyer will be available in the coming weeks, detailing some of the projects achievements so far. BPF Members will receive this via our regular newsletter.