Optical Properties of Bottles Produced by Injection Stretch Blow Molding Using a Blend of Reactive Extruded Recycled PET and Virgin PET
Firas Awaja, Fugen Daver, Edward Kosior, Dumitru Pavel
RMIT University
Australia

Keywords: Injection stretch blow molding, Recycled PET, Optical properties

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Reactive extruded recycled PET and virgin PET blends were used in injection stretch blow molding process to manufacture soft drink bottles. Bottles transparency is an important property in PET bottles. Highly crystallized PET material when used in injection stretch blow molding produce bottles with excellent mechanical and barrier properties while it produces poor bottles transperancy. An optimized blend of virgin PET and reactive extruded recycled PET that produce bottles with reasonable mechanical properties and high transparency was the goal for this work. In this study, bottles transparency was investigated as a response to the reactive extruded recycled PET concentration in the blend and to the amount of chain extender used in the making of reactive extruded recycled PET material. The relationship between the intrinsic viscosity and the initial crystallinity of the reactive extruded recycled PET and the bottles transparency is also investigated. It is found that transparency increases with decreasing reactive extruded recycled PET concentration in the blend and with increasing reactive extruded recycled PET viscosity. Transparency of virgin PET samples was also measured for comparison reasons.