Every year millions of tonnes of plastics and are produced [1]. Of the annual production, about 10% is recycled, 15% is burned and the remaining 75% is disposed to landfills or leaks into the environment [2]. Simultaneously as the demand of plastic materials is increasing, there is a paradigm shift towards more sustainable materials. The design and development of sustainable polymers, the backbone of plastics, is therefore crucial [3].
Major strategies include using biomass as a source of green carbon, designing polymers towards
degradability and enabling chemical recycling. Depending on the source of carbon and the ability
to degrade, polymers used for plastics are classified as petrobased or biobased and degrabable or
non-degradable.
Despite the industrial production of biobased and biodegradable polymers, there are challenges yet
to overcome. High performance polymer resins are important in applications such as coatings and matrices in fiber reinforced composites for several industries such as construction, marine, automotive, aerospace, energy, and biomedical sectors. The global market value was estimated to be 10.5 billion USD in 2021 and expecting to surpass 17 billion USD by 2030 [4,5]. To reduce the use of petroleum as the feedstock for polymer materials including polymer resins, biobased alternatives are needed.
In thermoset resins unsaturated polymers are cured with a reactive diluent, often styrene. The curing results in a network where polystyrene is crosslinked with the unsaturated polymer, resulting in a mechanically strong material with high heat resistance. These thermoset materials are therefore difficult to break down and recycle.
This study focuses on preparing and investigating bio-derivable unsaturated polyesters and crosslinking them with bio-derivable aromatic alkenes to produce a fully bio-derivable polymer resin keeping functionality from nature in the building blocks. The bio-derivable polymer resins are characterized to determine the influence of these functionality on the material properties. The functionality allows for looking into new mechanisms for breaking down the materials.
References:
1. Ritchie, H., & Roser, M., Plastic Pollution. Our World in Data, (2018)
2. Lau, W. W. Y., Shiran, Y., Bailey, R. M., Cook, E., Stuchtey, M. R., Koskella, J., Velis, C. A., Godfrey, L., Boucher, J., Murphy, M. B., Thompson, R. C., Jankowska, E., Castillo, A. C., Pilditch, T. D., Dixon, B., Koerselman, L., Kosior, E., Favoino, E., Gutberlet, J., Palardy, J. E. Evaluating scenarios toward zero plastic pollution. Science, 2020
3. de Pablo, J., & Hillmyer, M. A., Sustainable Polymers Square Table. Macromolecules, 2021.
4. Advanced Polymer Composites Market, GMI, 2022
5. Global Bio-Based Resins Market – Industry Trends and Forecast to 2029, Data Bridge, 2022; 10th anniversary of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, EC website.