plastics tagged posts

Tiny mealworms may hold part of the solution to our giant plastics problem. Not only are they able to consume various forms of plastic, as previous Stanford research has shown, they can eat Styrofoam containing a common toxic chemical additive and still be safely used as protein-rich feedstock for other animals, according to a new Stanford study published in Environmental Science & Technology.

The study is the first to look at where chemicals in plastic end up after being broken down in a natural system – a yellow mealworm’s gut, in this case...

© Photo Fraunhofer IGB Various raw materials as building blocks for plastics.

A process for manufacturing high-quality plastics from terpenes, a waste stream of the cellulose production has been developed by Fraunhofer researchers. Even if fossil resources got much cheaper in the last years there are big efforts to replace standard plastics by substances made from renewable resources. A reduced consumption of fossil resources is especially important because of the climate change caused by the release of CO2. Apart from the production of biodegradable polymers, for example for packaging applications, there is a big interest in high performance materials made from renewable resources.

The synthesis of polyamides from terpenes was developed at BioCat – Bio, Electro and Chemocataysis, the Str...