Biobased composite car seat wins innovation award

In Germany, the Bio4self consortium’s biobased autocomposite project has won the JEC Innovation Award for its prototype of a car seat made from self-reinforced, biobased polylactic acid.

Bio4self, which includes Fraunhofer ICT (Pfinztal, Germany) and the RWTH Aachen Institute of Textile Technology, combined two PLA grades with different melting temperatures. The material creates a self-reinforced composite because the higher melting PLA is embedded as a reinforcing fiber in the lower melting matrix.

The material can replace current, self-reinforced polypropylene composites with comparable mechanical strength, rigidity and temperature and hydrolytic stability.

The seat won the JEC Innovation Award for sustainability, which was handed out on March 12^th.