polyamides tagged posts

Scientists have developed a sustainable method to make high-performance plastics from agricultural leftovers, turning them into valuable materials.

In our rapidly industrialized world, the quest for sustainable materials has never been more urgent. Plastics, ubiquitous in daily life, pose significant environmental challenges, primarily due to their fossil fuel origins and problematic disposal.

Now, a study led by Jeremy Luterbacher’s team at EPFL unveils a pioneering approach to producing high-performance plastics from renewable resources.

The research, published in Nature Sustainability, introduces a novel method for creating...

© 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...