TAGS: Biobased Solutions
Two UC San Diego bioenergy projects have been selected by the United States Department of Energy to get funds for their research. The projects are alloted $4 million of funds in total for their three-year program to develop bio-based renewable plastic.
Funds Support Research on Biodegradability of PU and TPU
As principal investigators of the two individual projects, UCSD Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Michael Burkart and Professor of Nanoengineering Jon Pokorski will each use the funds for their continuing research on biodegradable polyurethane and thermoplastic polyurethanes, respectively.
Producing Biodegradable Polyurethane from Algae
Burkart was awarded $2 million for his project on making biodegradable polyurethane products from environmentally friendly algae. The DOE grant will support the next stage of research, which is to develop bio-based diisocyanates, hence increasing the renewability of the final product. Burkar’s lab utilized the technique of flow chemistry to synthesize diisocyanates in-flow from algae-derived organic matter.
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It’s interesting that when polyurethane was first discovered back in the 1930s, it was biodegradable, but the idea was to make it last forever, so they engineered out the biopolymers to make the material long lasting,” Burkart said. “
We’re revisiting and picking up [the old idea] back again.”
Along with colleagues Dr. Skip Pomeroy and Dr. Stephen Mayfield, Burkart has spent the past years making commercial products such as flip-flop footwear, surfboards and athletic shoe midsoles up to 50 percent biodegradable. Published in September, the team’s research discovered that polyurethane foams could be formed with the polyol in algae oil.
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Our goal is to get the bio-content greater than 80 percent,” Burkart said.
The research team will also identify the breakdown products and evaluate their toxicity after the bio-based polyurethane foams decompose in a natural environment, such as a backyard compost pile.
Microbial Spores to Promote TPU Biodegradation
UCSD Professor of Nanoengineering Jon Pokorski, on the other hand, was awarded to work with degradable thermoplastic polyurethanes. Pokorski’s research focuses on incorporating microbial spores to promote TPU biodegradation at the end of its lifecycle. The activated spores will degrade both polyether- and polyester-based TPUs and make it eco-friendly.
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PUs don’t really degrade. That’s what the spores are for. We are planning to bioengineer the spores to use TPU as a food source,” Pokorski said.
Pokorski will evaluate the stability and activity of the bio-integrated TPU, while his colleague and co-principal investigator, Dr. Adam Feist, research scientist at UCSD, will further optimize the non-pathogenic microbial strain for the degradation process. With the combined efforts of researchers at University of Georgia and chemical company BASF, the team targets to reach greater than 90% biodegradability.
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We knew that spores could survive polymer processing and we also know that spores are able to provide a bit of biodegradation. Here we are using that knowledge and expanding on it to make materials that are able to be composted, where that capability has never existed before,” Pokorski said.
The two researchers are members of the recently launched Institute for Materials Discovery and Design at UCSD, whose mission is to apply advanced materials to achieve higher sustainability.
Source: UCSD