From Laboratory To Industrial Continuous Production Of Polylactic Acid With Low Residual Monomer

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a 100 % bio-based polyester with strong market growth potential in commodity applications as a substitute of fossil-based polymers such as PET, PE and PS. The successful commercialization of this material relies on the possibility to devolatilize efficiently the unreacted monomer, which, in turn, requires an effective quenching of the polymerization catalyst. In this contribution we report an experimental screening of potential catalyst deactivators performed in small scale batch reactions. The best performing deactivator was then tested on a continuous PLA production plant of 1 kta to prove the reliability of the experimental approach. The plant data confirmed that the use of the selected deactivator improves the efficiency of the devolatilization process and leads to PLA with superior optical properties.