polymerguru

Coca-Cola has unveiled the first ever sample bottle made using recovered and recycled marine plastics, demonstrating that, one day, even ocean debris could be used in recycled packaging for food or drinks. This sample is the first ever plastic bottle made using marine litter that has been successfully recycled and reused in food and drink packaging. About 300 sample bottles have been produced using 25% recycled marine plastic, retrieved from the Mediterranean Sea and beaches. A small step for now, but the technology behind it has big potential. Revolutionary Enhanced Recycling Technologies The marine plastic bottle has been developed to show the transformational potential of revolutionary ‘enhanced recycling’ technologies, which can recycle previously used plastics of any quality back to the high-quality needed for food or drinks packaging. Enhanced recycling technologies use innovative processes that break down the components of plastic and strip out impurities in lo

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC) launched a joint sustainability project with Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia to produce sustainable chemical products from Vernonia galamensis. MPI Director Prof. Walter Leitner and his department at MPI CEC focuses on "green chemistry".  Their research is concerned with the manufacture of chemical products without using fossil resources. Green Collaboration Leitner, an honorary member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia, initiated the collaboration together with Prof. Yonas Chebude, Head of the Faculty of Chemistry in Addis Ababa.  Prof. Chebude and his team are conducting intensive research in Ethiopia on the conversion of biomass into chemically usable products.  Vernonia galamensis – Raw material for Epoxidized Oil They are currently focused on the plant Vernonia galamensis - normally thought of as a "weed". The plant produces 40% epoxidized oil which is promising for industrial produ

Researchers at TU Berlin are researching to replace plastics from petroleum - with the help of bacteria. Waste Fats: Raw Material for Alternative PHA A timid approach to dealing with plastic plague is PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates). They are biopolymers and are used widely as they are like plastic from fossil fuels. " Half of the two million tons of bioplastics that are currently produced worldwide per year are not biodegradable and the other half are sometimes difficult to ," says Riedel. Therefore, a need arises for alternative PHA based on other raw materials. The raw material can be obtained from many substances like corn, sugar, glycerine or palm oil. Sebastian L. Riedel and Stefan Junne, however, had a basic product that does not pollute the climate and is not food or feed such as corn as such a source material is considered problematic. In the search for an alternative,  they decided waste fats  among other things, which are incurred, inter alia, in agriculture (ani

Caltech researchers have helped to design a new generation of heart valves that are longer-lasting, cost less to manufacture, and are more biocompatible than options that are currently available to patients. As part of an FDA trial, one of the new valves was implanted into a human for the first time in late July. New Tria Valve for Aortic Valve Disease  The new Tria heart valve was created by Foldax® Inc., a Caltech startup cofounded by Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Gharib and his team worked closely with Foldax lead designer Jason Beith in designing the new valve. It was implanted in a patient with aortic valve disease at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, as part of an FDA Early Feasibility Study (EFS). Newly Developed Biopolymer Material for Durability The Tria valve uses a newly developed biopolymer material coupled with a bioinspired shape to create a valve

Researchers at TU Berlin are researching to replace plastics from petroleum - with the help of bacteria. Waste Fats: Raw Material for Alternative PHA A timid approach to dealing with plastic plague is PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates). They are biopolymers and are used widely as they are like plastic from fossil fuels. " Half of the two million tons of bioplastics that are currently produced worldwide per year are not biodegradable and the other half are sometimes difficult to ," says Riedel. Therefore, a need arises for alternative PHA based on other raw materials. The raw material can be obtained from many substances like corn, sugar, glycerine or palm oil. Sebastian L. Riedel and Stefan Junne, however, had a basic product that does not pollute the climate and is not food or feed such as corn as such a source material is considered problematic. In the search for an alternative,  they decided waste fats  among other things, which are incurred, inter alia, in agriculture (anim

Researchers from Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology have made a new, tough, transparent Polycarbonate composite reinforced with two biomass derived alternatives isosorbide and cellulose nanocrystals replacing both BPA and glass fibers. These Polycarbonate sheets have outperformed traditional BPA-reinforced polycarbonate plastic in strength tests and can replace BPA-based polycarbonates in a variety of common applications. The research team was led by Sung Hwang, Dongyeop Oh and Jeyoung Park from the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology. Safer Alternatives for BPA Polycarbonate  is a popular shatter-resistant alternative to glass in windows, display screens, bottles and optical fibers. However, polycarbonate plastics are frequently made using bisphenol A (BPA) and glass fibers. BPA is an endocrine disruptor increasingly associated with regulations – Canada, the EU and the US Food and Drug Administration have banned BPA in baby bottles with the EU also ba

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have developed a way of making organic polymers from the fragrant molecules found in conifers and fruit trees. The technique could lead to a new generation of sustainable materials for use in biomedical applications or  3D printing prototyping . Molecules called as terpenes are found in the essential oils of a wide variety of plants and are often used in fragrances, cosmetics and other household products. Terpenes can also be used to produce resins. Combining Terpenes & Thiols to Develop Light Activated Resins In order to find a way to produce sustainable polymers, researchers have devised a technique for extracting the terpenes molecules and converting them into stable resins. By combining them with sulfur-based organic compounds called thiols, the resins can be activated by light to form a solid material. Processing the terpenes in this way makes them particularly useful in a 3D printing process called stereolithography, where o