"Sugar + carbon dioxide" can be made into biodegradable plastic

It is understood that scientists from the University of Bath's Sustainable Chemistry Technology Center (CSCT) have discovered that it is possible to use sugar and carbon dioxide to make biodegradable plastics instead of plastics based on crude oil.

"Sugar + carbon dioxide" can be made into biodegradable plastic

Safer polycarbonate plastic

Polycarbonate is used in the manufacture of beverage bottles, eyeglass lenses and cell phones, scratch-resistant coatings for CDs and DVDs, the current polycarbonate manufacturing process uses BPA (forbidden in baby bottles) and highly toxic phosgene, for the first time World War was used as a chemical weapon. Bass scientists in a new process made sugar and carbon dioxide instead of polycarbonate, which adds carbon dioxide to sugar at low pressure and at room temperature. This makes production cheaper and safer.

Biodegradable and biocompatible

The resulting plastic has physical properties similar to those of petrochemicals, with sturdiness, transparency, and scratch resistance. The key difference is that enzymes found in soil bacteria can be degraded to carbon dioxide and sugar. New BPA-free plastics can replace current polycarbonates such as baby bottles and food containers, and because they are biocompatible, they can also be used for medical implants or stents for growing tissue or organ transplants.

"Sugar + carbon dioxide" can be made into biodegradable plastic

Dr. Antoine Buchard, a researcher, said: "As the population continues to grow, the demand for plastics cannot continue to grow. This new type of plastic is a substitute for fossil fuel polymers and is very cheap. It is biodegradable and will not cause any damage to the oceans. And landfill waste increases. Our process uses carbon dioxide instead of highly toxic chemical phosgene and produces a plastic that does not contain bisphenol A, so the plastic is not only safer but also cleaner during manufacturing.”

Inspired by nature

Dr. Buchard and his team used nature as a process inspiration to use the sugar called thymidine in DNA as building blocks to create new polycarbonate plastics with great potential. Thymidine is one of the units that make up DNA because it already exists in the body, which means that the plastic will be biocompatible and can be used safely in tissue engineering applications.

By adjusting the chemical structure, the properties of this new type of plastic can be adjusted - for example, we can make the plastic positively charged, allowing cells to adhere to it, making it a scaffold for tissue engineering. This kind of tissue engineering work has been done with Dr. Ram Sharma of the Chemical Engineering Company and is part of the CSCT.

"Sugar + carbon dioxide" can be made into biodegradable plastic

Using sugar as a renewable alternative to petrochemicals

The researchers also studied the use of other sugars such as ribose and mannose.

Dr. Buchard added: “Chemists have 100 years of experience in petrochemical raw materials. We are starting to use renewable raw materials such as sugar as a synthetic but sustainable material base. It is still early, but it looks promising in the future. ."