Castor oil evokes unpleasant thoughts – whether it's an ancient home medicine remedy or a punishment of squadristica memory – yet it is from this vegetable oil that in Japan they have found a way to obtain a plastic material with revolutionary performance. Toyota took care of it - thanks to the collaboration between two subsidiaries of the group, Toyota Boshoku Corp and Toyota Central R&D Labs Inc - by extracting a polyamide (PA 11) from castor oil and using it to produce, alloyed with polypropylene (PP), a bioplastic material ten times stronger than standard polypropylene, currently used to make car interiors. The properties of ricinoleic acid have been known for some time and have already been exploited for the production of plastic materials, but the Toyota laboratories have found a way to improve the alloy formation process and to enhance the affinities between the polyamide contained in the seeds of the castor and polypropylene. Initially conceived to replace PP in interior finishes, bioplastic has had a yield so much higher than expected as to justify the intention to use it also as a base material for all those parts of the car that need high resistance to better protect passengers in the moment of the impact. From the inside to the outside, the step is short, and there is already talk of building bumpers and mudguards with castor oil bioplastic. Why, then, stop at the world of cars? There are so many products manufactured using polymer alloys, from suitcases to the external casings of mobile phones, from household appliances to protective helmets, and all of them could benefit from the exceptional resistance offered by the new material.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/toyota-announces-bioplastic-with-high-impact-resistance
