Polymers In The 20th Century: Plastics Of The Twentieth Century

Plastic of the 20th Century

Introduction

With up to 150 million tons of plastic being consumed each year since the 1950s, it is clear that this polymer plays a critical role in everyday life (Icpeenvis.nic.in, 2011). A polymer is a substance made from identical monomers (molecules) joined together to form one large molecule (Smith et al., 2006). Plastic is often made from petrochemicals, with thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers being the two forms (Helmenstine, 2016). These are found ubiquitously, from packaging to health care. However, with the production and disposal of plastic at an all-time high, this can have devastating environmental effects. For this reason, a versatile plastic which is biodegradable, and produced from sustainable

Figure 2: Production Process of PLA (Using polylactic acid, 2016). Figure 3: Hydrolysis of PLA in Water (Way, 2014). Figure 4: Effect of Temperature and Humidity on Biodegradation of PLA (Way, 2014). Figure 5: Ring-opening polymerization (Chemistry.stackexchange.com, 2016). Figure 6: Main PLA Production Methods (Bardone, Bravi and Keshavarz, 2014).

lactic acid → pyruvic acid → tricarboxylic acid cycle → CO2 and H2O

Equation 1: PLA forming Carbon Dioxide and Water (Kenny and Ayotte, 2016).

References

Anonymous. "NEW PROCESS MAKES BIOPLASTIC PRODUCTS CHEAPER." Buildings. 01 Aug. 2015: 19. eLibrary. Web. 22 Jul. 2016.

Arena, M., Abbate, C., Fukushima, K. and Gennari, M. (2011). Production process for polylactic acid (PLA) : Industrial plant : Infrastructure Systems : Hitachi. [online] Hitachi.com. Available at: http://www.hitachi.com/businesses/infrastructure/product_site/ip/process/pla.html [Accessed 24 Jul. 2016].

Bardone, E., Bravi, M. and Keshavarz, T. (2014). Synthesis and Characterizations of Poly (Lactic Acid) by Ring-Opening Polymerization for Biomedical Applications. 1st ed. [ebook] AIDIC. Available at: http://www.aidic.it/cet/14/38/056.pdf [Accessed 24 Jul.