Page 58 - Plastics News May 2019

TECHNOLOGY

'Green' Building Blocks for New plastic that could be fully

Bioplastics recycled created

io-based plastics are emerging as a next generation team of researchers working at the U.S. Department
Bmaterial and are expected to replace petroleum- Aof Energy says it has created a kind of plastic that
derived plastics. A plant-derived polyester, called could lead to products that are 100 percent recyclable.
polyethylene furanoate (PEF), is a promising polymer The team works at the Department of Energy’s
derived from plants that can replace the PET. A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
collaboration between researchers in Japan and the
Netherlands has developed a one-step method to fabricate
plant-derived materials for the mass production of more
environmentally friendly plastics. A team led by Kiyotaka
Nakajima of Hokkaido University, Japan, and Emiel Hensen
of Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands,
developed the technology, which researchers said could
help solve the problem of plastic pollution by enabling the
development of sustainable products, such as beverage
bottles made out of biomaterials. The process the team
developed involves aerobic oxidation of a biomass-derived
substrate called HMF in methanol and ethylene glycol
produces monomers called MFDC and HEFDC, respectively. It recently reported the discovery in a study in the
journal Nature Chemistry. The researchers say the new
“Environmentally benign processes using renewable material is a plastic polymer called polydiketoenamine,
resources especially for commodity chemicals production or PDK. The team reports that the material can be
are highly important to develop sustainable society. This is broken down in parts at the molecular level.It can
the impetus behind his team’s work to produce a monomer, then be built up again to form plastics of different
shapes, textures, colors and more. The researchers
say this process can be repeated over and over again --
without the plastic material losing any performance or
quality.“Most plastics were never made to be recycled,”
lead researcher Peter Christensen said in a statement.
Christensen works at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry
center. “But we have discovered a new way to assemble
plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a
molecular perspective.” The team explained that all
plastics – from water bottles to automobile parts – are
or building block, for bioplastics” Nakajima said .. One made up of polymers with a molecular structure. These
plant-derived polyester, called polyethylene furanoate polymers are made up of carbon-containing compounds
(PEF), has risen to the top as a promising 100-percent known as monomers. Many plastics have different
renewables-based polymer derived from plants to replace chemicals added to them to make them more useful and
polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is one of the most powerful. The problem is that these chemicals attach to
widely used plastics in the world. PEF has better physical, the monomers, which remain in the plastics even after
mechanical, and thermal properties than PET, but a the material gets processed at a recycling plant. The
drawback so far to its use is that mass production of the research team reported that, with the newly discovered
PDWHULDO KDV EHHQ KDPSHUHG E\ DQ LQHIÀFLHQW SURGXFWLRQ PDK material, the monomers could be recovered and
of the monomers. The latest research changes that with separated from any chemical additives. This part of
a one-step process to produce monomers called MFDC and the process would involve putting the plastic material
HEFDC, critical to the development of PEF. into “a highly acidic solution.”

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