Making plastics from plants. New catalyst converts waste CO2 to useful molecules. Recycling CO2 to make plastic. Lowering the color of crystals in sugar factories. Like diamonds, sugar crystals ideally are very pure and low in color.
Now studies led by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) chemist Gillian Eggleston have provided a better understanding of the source of undesirable color in factory sugar. Eggleston works in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Commodity Utilization Research Unit in New Orleans, La. She conducted the studies with Barbara Muir of the Sugar Milling Research Institute in Durban, South Africa. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.
Environmental concerns have led to a shift away from burning cane in open fields to remove "trash," which is impurities such as leaves, tops and muddy soil that piggyback on sugarcane from the field into the factory. Biopolymers and nanocomposites. During the past few decades, biopolymers have attracted much attention for industrial, biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.
In the field of polymers for industrial applications, more than 80% of plastic production is based on polyolefins (e.g. polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE)), polystyrene (PS), poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), etc) which are mostly produced from fossil fuels, consumed and discarded into the environment, ending up as spontaneously undegradable wastes, which means that 80% of plastic refuse is practically eternal and is becoming a global environmental problem.
On these backgrounds, there is an urgent need for the development of biodegradable materials that would not involve the use of toxic components in their manufacture and could be degraded in relatively short times to environmentally friendly products. The biodegradation of aliphatic polyesters has been reported to proceed by one or several mechanisms including hydrolysis, microbial and enzymatic degradation. Polymer developments (carbonates, PLA, FDCA, copolyester and olefins) There was a golden age, from the late 1930s through the mid ’60s, when chemists invented most of the polymers we use today.
These materials—nylon, polyethylene, polypropylene, polycarbonate, and polyester, to name a few—quickly took hold with a public eager to remodel its world in colorful, modern, and durable plastics. The days of glass shampoo bottles, paper food packaging, and chrome bumpers were numbered. In fact, those early plastics were so successful that it has become difficult to launch newer polymers in the marketplace.