Trifilon

Trifilon’s business is providing a more sustainable alternative to large-scale producers of plastic, but the roots of the company lie in high-tech, carbon-fiber super-vehicles. In 2006 at Linköping University, a pair of researchers were scratching their heads about how to make a more recyclable carbon fiber material. Carbon fiber is used widely in aerospace and motorsports industries not to mention the military and civil engineering because it has a number of material advantages including high stiffness, high tensile strength, and low weight. Unfortunately, its manufacture is energy intensive, and it’s a difficult material to recycle. The researchers’ idea then was to discover those material advantages in an organic, renewable feedstock – hemp – which they could use to reinforce a plastic. Hemp is a plant whose fibers have high stiffness, high tensile strength, and low weight to aid the rapid growth of that long, thin plant. That would be as opposed to wood fibers, which are optimal for supporting heavy, slow-growing plants, namely, trees. Hemp fibers also blend well with polymers through processes that the researchers discovered and patented. Perhaps most importantly, hemp fibers have low density meaning the new hybrid composites were often as strong and lighter than what they replaced.