Presentation on Bioplastics
Bioplastics, What are they?
* Compostable Plastics
-or-
* Any plastics-made from organisms (or Organism by-products).
* Currently, there is much confusion over the definition of bioplastics
Mixture of Acids that could be made into bioplastics
Making Bioplastics, Etc.
Goal of Bioplastic Production
* To Save Resources by either reducing the production of standard Polypropylene plastics by replacing it with a less resource-intensive plastic.
* Or Save the Environment by making plastics biodegradable
* Or, both!
Bioplastic degradation speed
What are Scientists Doing Now?
Several Different Exciting Methods are being tried right now!
* Using Soy-based bioplastics
* Using Bacteria to make bioplastics
* Starch-based Bioplastics
* Polylactide Bioplastics
* Poly-3-Hydroxybutyrate
Current Cost of Bioplastic Comparison
Soy-based Bioplastics
One of the hottest sections in bioplastics research today.
Pure Soy Bioplastic has many undesirable traits.
Mixtures of Soy with other substances are currently being attempted.
The Soy shown
Soy Protein
Bacteria-based Bioplastics
Steven Pratt of New Zealand (Major New Discovery)
Mixture of bacteria can create acids when fermented.
The ratio of different acids is based on pH.
The bacteria are fed glucose solution and fermented.
The acids can be used to make bioplastics
Starch-Based
* Make up about 50% of the current bioplastic market
* Are used in pills that you take
* Can be specificially tailored by adding different amounts of plasticizers
* This is called “thermo-plastical starch”
Polylactide Bioplastics
* Lactic acid is turned into Polylactide by adding a catalyst and heat.
* Polylactide bioplastics can be made on existing petroleum plastic equipment
* Resembles plastic in properties
Poly-3-Hydroxybutyrate
* A polyester
* Easily biodegradable
* Easily processed
* Currently very expensive
* Current interest is very high
* Methylobacterium sp V49 is one bacteria that produces Poly-3-Hydroxybutyrate
Challenges Facing Bioplastics
* Economically Unfeasible
* Biodegradability is a useful and a not-so-useful property
Environmentally preferable products (EPP) and their services offer society much more benefit to our safety and health than their competition. These products allow us to build environmentally friendly architecture while still offering safe stability in its construction. EPP offers reduced effects on human health by looking for cleaner alternative methods as their more harmful counterparts. These products have a wide scope of use including products from manufacturing and distribution, to maintenance and disposal.
Reducing risk ; reducing the quantity of manufactured so that reducing burden of stock and burden of frequent discount sales
Anonymous. "NEW PROCESS MAKES BIOPLASTIC PRODUCTS CHEAPER." Buildings. 01 Aug. 2015: 19. eLibrary. Web. 22 Jul. 2016.
Other alterations such as dying the polymer are less cost efficient to recycle and can be more difficult as well. There are certain types of HDPE (high density polyethylene) that are blown into shapes such as bottles. Different chemicals are used in this process and therefore have to be separated into their own category when recycling. The reason people have moved away from landfill dumping and moved towards recycling is due to the fact that it is much more cost effective to recycle compared to paying engineers and environmentalist to designing landfills.4 The HDPE can also be mechanically recycled through curb side pick ups.
Production of polypropylene takes place by slurry, solution or gas phase process, in which the propylene monomer is subjected to heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst system. Polymerization is achieved at relatively low temperature and pressure and the product yielded is translucent, but readily colored. Differences in catalyst and production conditions can be used to alter the properties of the plastic. Propylene is obtained, along with ethylene, by cracking naphtha (crude oil light distillate). Ethylene, propylene, and higher alkenes are separated by low temperature fractional distillation.[3]
Plastic bottles are everywhere, whether they are soda bottles, water bottles or even reusable bottles. Each year the number of plastic bottles filling up landfills is increasing by a considerable amount, which is a serious problem and can result in grave consequences for the environment. The average time estimated for a plastic bottle to decompose is approximately seven hundred years. One way to solve this problem is to recycle plastic bottles into the polyester by a process called polymerization. A lot of textile industries select polyester as their choice of fibre and fabric. Polyester is extensively used in manufacturing all kinds of clothes and home furnishings. According to Kris Barber (2011, page2), it takes about three bottles to make
In conclusion, humans need to realize the benefits of recycling plastic bags can do for the environment because with recycling, we can clean up parks, roadsides, parking lots and many more other places that has a massive amount of litter. This will also have an enormous impact on future generations, thus to the fact that we can decrease pollution by just charging ten extra cents for plastic bags. Furthermore, plastic bags are unnecessary because humans can just purchase a reusable bag instead of using toxic
Well did you know you not only get paid to recycle, but the environment as a whole benefits from this as well. Today recycling is a huge deal because the Environmental Protection Agency knows that if we don't mitigate or prevent trash from entering The Great Garbage Patches, they will only increase in size and become worse. All countries recycling percentages are anywhere between “0 percent to 63 percent being the highest.” Though these percentages are better than previous years there is much more room for improvement. With the recycling percentages remaining relatively low worldwide, many scientist and engineers have worked together to create biodegradable plastic. The two different types of biodegradable plastics are bioplastics themselves and plastics that use biodegradable additives. The questions is, how does creating bioplastics help prevent pollution in the ocean? Besides the fact that bioplastics can be decomposed, it’s also made up of natural materials such as corn oil and plants, instead of petroleum based raw materials. “2.65 kg of corn is needed in order to make 1 kg of polylactic acid”, which polylactic acid is the only known acid to make compostable plastic. These bioplastics also carry less toxins and do not consist of any Bisphenol A (BPA) or any of those harsh chemical pollutants found from the micro plastics that are currently in the ocean. Unfortunately, some bioplastics cannot be broken down as
A polymer is a large molecule consisting of many smaller subunits known as monomers. There are different types of polymers and many uses for all of them. Even though people may not realize it polymers play an essential role in our everyday life. For polymers range from plastics, PVC, and Styrofoam to key structures in the human body like DNA and proteins which are key components to the human body that makes it possible for each of us to live and be unique. So with out polymers in our body we would be dead, and with out them in our society it would be a drastically changed for the worse to say the least
It is universally acknowledged that plastic is one of the most common pollutants to environment, but what is the definition of marine plastic pollution? Plastic pollution in marine areas is the accumulation of pollutants including plastic bags, containers and micro debris in the oceans or on the shore side. Plastics can spread in the oceans all over the world due to buoyancy force, thus leading to a global ocean plastic pollution problem at the present (Eriksen et al., 2014). Marine plastic pollution can cause damage to the ocean ecosystem considerably, and will decrease the quality of sea water at the same time. Marine animals ingest those plastic fragments which they cannot
Plastics today play an important part in cutting-edge technologies such as the space program, bullet-proof vests and prosthetic limbs, as well as in everyday products such as beverage containers, medical devices and automobiles. Recycled plastics are used to make polymeric timbers for use in picnic tables, fences, and outdoor toys, thus saving natural lumber. Plastic from 2-liter bottles is even being spun into fiber for the production of carpet. They are such a valuable resource, that, as a society, we have become dependent on plastics. It is essential that we develop programs to assure this resource will always be available in the future.
Synthetic plastics are used widely in food packaging, detergents, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals’ packaging. Almost 30% of the synthetic plastics are used for packaging applications in the world and this rate is expanding at 12% per annum. They have replaced traditionally used papers and cellulose products for packaging purposes because of owing better physical and chemical properties. Polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, poly(ethylene terephthalate), poly(butylene terephthalate) and nylon are most commonly used plastics. Plastics possess not only suitable thermal and mechanical properties but also better stability and durability. Plastics have attractive more public and media attention because of its durability and visibility in a litter as compared to other solid components. In 1993, total world consumption of this material was 107 million tons and it reached to 146 million tons in
Have you ever wondered where plastic waste ends up? Have you ever thought about the consequences of plastic waste? What are the purposes of plastic? Although plastic is good for convenient uses, long term uses, and economic purposes, the damages plastic can cause are by far way more harmful than imaginable. Plastic is wasted just as much, if not more, than used, plastic is an imminent threat to the water life ecosystem, and plastic is also not biodegradable. Most people, like myself, have never really thought about where plastic ends up or how harmful products made from plastic can be if not disposed properly. Almost everything used in today’s society is made of or contains some sort of plastic. Limiting distributed plastic would not only benefit
...t. This cycle is very important in reducing the production of natural resources, which are, can be leading to the environmental degradation. It also helps to reduce the number of plastic bottles wasted which will undoubtedly pollute the environment and our lives. All in all, recycling plastic can help in maintaining the conservation and preservation of nature towards the better life for the future if we know the benefits is.
Polymers are always been around everywhere we go and have been increasing as time goes on. From its inception until today, polymers have enhanced our quality of life. The common questions asked here are usually what they are, where can I find them, where did they come from, how they are made, and what are some future possibilities? The first thing you might want to know about polymers is what they are.