Biopolymers and Bioplastics

Green polymer synthesis

Increasing environmental concerns and depleting of petro-chemical resources has given rise to development biorenewable polymer-based environment friendly materials. Among these polymers are lignin and cellulose based materials. Lignin is readily available as a major byproduct of a number of industries involved in extracting the polysaccharide components of plants for commercial applications which includes paper making, ethanol production from biomass, etc. The advantage of such polymers is that they are highly abundant, low weight, environmentally friendly and have antioxidant, antimicrobial, and biodegradable properties. Green polymers have been synthesized for advanced applications such as porous three-dimensional polylactide scaffolds which were obtained from PLA which were incorporated with various quantities chitosan-modified montmorillonite (CS-MMT). It was produced using solvent casting and particulate leaching technique. The manufactured scaffolds were tested in the labs for their possible application in tissue engineering of bones. The advantage of this material is that the scaffolds are bioabsorbable, which means that the scaffolds will be completely absorbed overtime. Enzymatic polymerization is also another method for polymer synthesis which is an in-vitro method utilizing non biosynthetic pathways catalyzed by an isolated enzyme. This method was developed during this decade. It utilizes enzymes of hydrolases with oxidoreductases as catalysts. This noval technique has provided natural polysaccharides like cellulose and chitin, and unnatural polysaccharides to be catalyzed using a glycosidase from specifically designed monomers, different functionalized polyesters catalyzed by lipase from a variety of monomers catalyzed by oxidoreductase and an enzyme model complex for phenols and anilines.