Chanda ranga: Car Parts Finder

Sunday 5 August 2012

Car Parts Finder

A new biodegradable material made from shrimp and crab shells that can replace petroleum-based plastics used in auto components helped University of Toronto student Aaron Guan win the AUTO21 TestDRIVE competition.
The Master of science student has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship for his innovative work on recyclable, lightweight polymeric nanocomposites. Shrimp and crab shell fibres, called chitin nanowhiskers, form the base of this new material, which might just help auto components meet strict environmental standards without compromising vehicle safety.
For the uninitiated, nanoscale dispersion of filler or controlled nanostructures in the composite of a material matrix can introduce new physical properties and novel behaviours that are absent in the unfilled matrices, effectively changing the nature of the original matrix. For plastics, appropriately adding nanoparticulates to a polymer matrix can enhance its performance, often in very dramatic degree, by simply capitalizing on the nature and properties of the nanoscale filler. It’s a strategy that’s particularly effective in yielding high performance composites, when good dispersion of the filler is achieved and the properties of the nanoscale filler are substantially different or better than those of the matrix – for example, reinforcing a polymer matrix by much stiffer nanoparticles.
Seafood shells probably don’t leap to mind when most of us think of stiff nanoparticles, but as Guan explained, the shells’ chitin nanowhiskers fibres actually have a much higher mechanical strength than conventional plastics found in auto parts, and can provide higher mechanical strength without aesthetic flaws or deformation at lower densities.