Biodegradable sheet material and its application.

摘要

A biodegradable latex web material suitable as a replacement for plastic in a wide variety of uses due to its good overall strength and its ratio of wet strength to dry strength. The material includes a web of cellulose fibers which, prior to treatment with a saturant, has a breaking length in the dry state ranging from 0.80 to 6.20 km. Optionally, the web can contain synthetic fibers to improve the tear strength of the material. In order to obtain tensile strengths which are comparable to plastics,the fibrous web is saturated with a latex composition which may be natural, synthetic or a combination of natural and synthetic polymers. In addition to latex, other additives may be incorporated into the saturant for special end use properties. The latexes used will have glass transition temperatures (Tg) of between -50 DEG C and 20 DEG C. If mixing natural and synthetic polymers together, the ratio of synthetic to natural polymers should be 2:1 to 4:1 by weight. The saturant compositions are applied to the base web at an add on from 16 to 80 dry parts saturant per 100 parts fiber by weight to form a latex web composite. The composite once formed should have an average strength of at least about 50 kg/cm<2> and a ratio of wet strength to dry strength ranging from 0.2 to 0.6.