Hi, I wanted to know if you could send me detailed information about the generation of bio plastic, since I am a student of industrial design and I like that my thesis is about this subject.

Very good video!

My project is about generation of clothing.

I send a big greeting from Mar del Plata, Argentina!

If you watch the media for news of bioplastics (the way that we do, here at Green Plastics), you will have noticed that for the last few days the Big News has been cashew-based plastics.

The Independent announces:

A unique plastic made from cashew nut shells could be used in consumer electronics by 2013.

Japanese company NEC Corporation has announced the development of a first-of-its kind biomass-based plastic -- bio-plastic - produced using non-edible plant resources such as cashew nut shells. The plastic is durable enough to be used in electronic equipment and NEC expects that with continued research bio-plastic could be used in a range of electronic devices by 2014.

Everyone is applauding from every side. The plastic is durable, heat-resistant, and water-resistant, so it would be safe to use in all kinds of electronic equipment from cell phones to laptops. It would make the creation of electronic devices more environmentally friendly. And because it is based on cashew shells, we can make as much of it as we want to without endangering our own food supply.

But with all of the publicity surrounding this breakthrough, you might want to know a little more about the science behind it...

hi! im a freshmen student and I am inspired to do bioplastic as my investigatory project.

Can you help me by siting two hypothesis? (null and alternative) :)

Hi
Congratulations on the how to make bioplastics video
I was wondering if you could send me the list of materials
thank you

lasc

There is a great deal of confusion about the term “bioplastic”. Some believe that the definition of bioplastic means biodegradable plastic. Some people think that bioplastics will automatically "melt" when exposed to water.  There is a tendency to lump many of the new green plastics under the same umbrella: bioplastics, biodegradables, etc.  These leads to the media using a number of terms as if they were interchangeable: “eco-friendly”, “green”, “compostable”, “biodegradable”, “degradable”, “bioplastic”, etc.  But these terms are very different when looking at them from a scientific perspective.

Bioplastics in a technical sense are simply plastics created from the use of a biological feedstock: the starch from corn, potatoes, grass, trees, or other living or once living material.  Biodegradable plastics, on the other hand, are defined scientifically as “…when the degradation is the result of naturally-occurring micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi and algae.”  As it turns out, creating plastic from biological feedstock (“bioplastic”) could result in plastics that are biodegradable, compostable, or even non-biodegradable like the traditional plastics like we see on the market today!

I am design art student and have tried your recipe for bioplastic
for a school project. However, the plastic never completely dried.

It either stayed spongy and wet or it cracked and became very thin.

I have used tapioca corn starch and vegetable glycernin with
pure white vinegar and tap water.

sSyreNe21 asks in a comment on our YouTube Video:

what kind of glycerin is that?
crude glycerin?...pls reply..anyone..
im begging u!!!

Reply from Green Plastics:

Glyercin (also called glycerol) is something you should be able to get at drugstores, or even online (use google to search for "buy glycerin" and you should get a lot of hits).  Glycerol is produced by the fermentation of sugar, or from vegetable and animal oils and fats, as a by-product of the manufacture of soaps and fatty acids.

The purpose of glycerin in the bioplastic recipe is that it acts as a plasticizer.  If you are a student, you may have access to a wider range of supplies through school.  If you do, you might want to get you hands on sorbitol, which also works as a plasticizer.

Glycerin and other small molecules, like sorbitol, increase the plasticity of cast films and sheets.  You can add them to some form of polymer --- in the case of the video, use plain starch like cornstarch.

To make bioplastic, you always want at least one polymer and at least one plasticizer, but remember you can play around with different amounts of each--and when you have access to more than one type of polymer or plasticizer, you can try them in different combinations, as well.

Experiment until you get it right: the more plasticizer you use, the more flexible the end result will be; but use too much, and the end result will be tacky and will never dry.

Comment here if you have more questions, and happy experimenting!

Hi!

I’m a senior student in a science high school in the Philippines. We are required to make an investigatory project, and my group mates and I thought of making bioplastic from cassava (Manihot esculenta) sap and chitin from leftover crab shells. We gathered lots of information from different materials, mostly from the Internet. Just two weeks ago, we came across a video in YouTube and we thought that we can pattern our methodology from the one used in the video. That video was the one featured in your website.

Here is one of the procedures, as well as the materials we used in our experiment. By the way, we used crushed crab shells.

Methodologies:

- Extraction of Chitin (from Crab shells)

1. Dilute solution of sodium hydroxide (1-10%) at high temperature (85-100°C)

2. Demineralization (treating in a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid (1-10%) at room temperature)

3. Decolorizing process – obtaining white chitin (organic solvents/very dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite)

Depending on the severity of these treatments such as temperature, duration, concentration of the chemicals, concentration and size of the crushed shells, the physico-chemical characteristics of the extracted chitin will vary. For instance, the three most important characteristics of the chitin i.e., degree of polymerization, acetylation and purity, will be affected.

We tried doing it, but didn’t get any good results. We expected to also see the clear paste we saw in the video, but all we got was a yellowish, sort-of viscous liquid. After the experiment, we tried weighing things down, and came up with the following:

1. We have read what chitin is, but we’re not sure what it really looks like.

2. And since we don’t really have a clear idea on what chitin is, we weren’t able to make the bioplastic.

Now, we thought of asking help from you and the other guys featured on the site. We really want to be successful in this, because this project was chosen along with a few others to represent our school in an upcoming local science fair. Do you have anything to say about our methodology or materials that made our trial a failure?

We would really appreciate it if you would help us. If we did it right, we’ll let you know what the results are. Thank you very much! :)

Little problem here...

I just made a batch and after 24 hours it is as wet as the moment I poured it.

Will it ever dry?

You claim that you can make it as thin or thick as you want.   I just poured it on tinfoil and did not spread it at all. It all evened out and it is a puddle only a couple of millimeters thick.

Has anyone else who has followed the instructions in the video had the same problem?