AZO CleanTech just published a very well-written science article about some of the science behind biofuels and biopolymer technology.  They specifically spend some time talking about the chemistry underlying "furanics", a type of material made up of a particular type of organic compound (furan) that can be derived from sugars and other carbohydrates, but most importantly can be made from non-food sources.  They talk about this in the context of biofuels, but this article is a good read for anyone who is interested in learning about the chemistry behind bioplastics, as well.

Why? Consider this: NatureWorks and Avantium, two leaders in the field of sustainable materials, announced last year that they are starting to work together on a research project that could lead to a new type of bioplastics.  And it is based on furanics.

A little background: Avantium has been working for some time now with furanic materials.  Initially, Avantium tried to develop this material as a biofuel, but this was met with limited success.  They successfully were able to test it as an engine fuel, and even had prototype cars running on it in Brazil.  However, it is too expensive to go into wide use as fuel in motorcars (about US$1900 per metric ton), and the processing can be expensive and difficult (although Avantium has invested a lot in a special Furanic Processing Plant).

So what is the next step for this bio-material?  Since both have biopolymers as their foundation, it is only natural to make the intuitive leap from biofuel to..... bioplastic!

NatureWorks, of course, has been hugely successful in developing a wide range of end markets & products for its Ingeo(TM) biopolymer, and so is teaming up with Avantium to see what can be done with furanic material.  It is still exploratory, but of course they are optimistic:

"We believe it is incumbent on us to investigate tomorrow's potential solutions beginning today," said Marc Verbruggen, president and CEO of NatureWorks. "For example, development of NatureWorks Ingeo(TM) biopolymer began in the 1990s. Avantium's work to date is impressive, and we look forward to a productive joint collaboration."

Will this be the Next Big Thing in bioplastics?

Procter & Gamble recently announced that it will use sugarcane-based high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic made by Braskem in some of its packaging on its Pantene Pro-V, Covergirl and Max Factor brands. Pilot products will be rolled out globally over the next two years with first commercial products expected on the shelf in 2011.

The products will probably carry Braskem's "Im Green" seal. Braskem said Brazilian consumers will see the new bioplastic packaging in Pantene hair treatment products.

Braskem's new 200,000 tonne/year green polyethylene plant located in Triunfo (in the state of Rio Grande do Sul) is expected to start in September. The facility will consume about 500 million liters/year of ethanol initially purchased from other regions.

Other notable prospective customers for the green PE include Toyota and Shiseido. P&G by the way is already a long-time customer of Braskem's traditional PE plastic, according to Braskem.

According to a recent announcement, we may be able to use cashews in our phones.

NEC says that it has developed a new form of bio-plastic that could be used for mobile phones and is 70% made from a mixture of cellulose, a main component of plant stems, with cardanol, a primary component of cashew nut shells.

Current bio-plastics include large amounts of oil-based additives, which results in a low plant component ratio.

As an alternative to oil-based components, cellulose is the plastic's major ingredient. The cellulose, which is produced in large amounts by plants, including grass stems, etc., is modified by cardanol, an oil-like material that is extracted from cashew nut shells. Most of these stems and nut shells are abundant resources, which are often discarded byproducts of the agricultural process.

This not only will decrease the amount of non-plant additive used in the phone's material, but it does it in a way that won't cause a problem for food prices.

Global bioplastic packaging consumption is projected to reach 125,000 tonnes in 2010, while the market value is forecast at $454 million. The Future of Bioplastics for Packaging to 2020 quantifies current and future demand for bioplastic packaging globally. It examines the key drivers facing suppliers and processors of bioplastic packaging and assesses the most important technology developments. With markets broken down by product type, pack type, end-use sector and geographic region, quantitative market data covering 2005–09, and forecasts for 2010, 2015 and 2020, this brand new report will provide you with the complete, invaluable guide to the bioplastic packaging supply chain.

Find out about:

• The future of the bioplastic packaging market
• Technology forecasts for biopolymers, bioplastics and non-biodegradable bio-derived thermoplastics
• Key market drivers and trends

In a long and interesting article about the use of databases in genetic engineering, bioplastics get a special mention:

Toyoda is also a member of the RIKEN Biomass Engineering Program, which was initiated in April 2010. Through the program, Toyoda aims to improve the efficiency of producing bioplastic materials based on rational genome design methods for plants. Genome design methods and programs collected through GenoCon would also be used for that purpose.

I fear this will drive some environmentalists crazy, bringing together an idea they stereotypically love (the idea of green plastics) and an idea they stereotypically hate (genetic engineering).

But as a scientist, my question to you is: why are so many environmentalists so scared of genetic engineering? There are some very good ecological arguments for genetic engineering, and now we can add one more to the list:  the production of better, stronger, cheaper biodegradable plastics.

This will be the second year of the Shenzhen China International Bio-plastic Exhibition. It serves as a platform for trade and technology exchanges for business people from all over the world. In 2009, enterpreneurs from about 20 countries and areas paticipated in this fair, many of which were from the U.S.A., the U.K., Germany, Italy, Tailand, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Hongkong. During the exhibition, world-renowned corperations like as BSF and INNOR had discussions on the application and future of biodegradable materials.

To meet the demands of many bio-degradable enterprises, the Second Shenzhen International Bio-plastic Exhibition will be held in Great China Exchange Plaza from 16th to 17th, November 2010. Present will be business people in plastic manufactoring ,catering, packaging, machine building, and top officials form star-rate hotels.  Officials from local government departments for economic development and International Investment Organization will also be invited to the fair. The fair is expected to be of high-level and distinctive feature with an inflence on the world bio-degradable industry.

Check out their website, http://www.szhowell.net/en/, for more information.

Preparation:  2010-11-14 to 2010-11-15
Main Event:  2010-11-16 to 2010-11-17
Conclusion:  2010-11-17

TEL:86-755-28188469 13684940952 Liu Lu
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WEB:www.szhowell.net.en

This short video shows a little of Cereplast's bioplastic resin manufacturing lines. A few points to take away from the video:

• Bioplastics cost about 20% more than regular plastics
• Most are currently based on corn and tapioca
• If they take off, bioplastics may put stress on the cost of food
• Cereplast hopes to release an algae based bioplastic later this year.

I would like you to read a pair of articles, and think about them in relation to eachother.

First is a recent study that estimates that...in theory up to 90 % of all plastic products and plastic consumption could be replaced by bioplastics. In theory. Of course, we're not even close, and won't be for a long time. But if you take the "long view", we know that at least in principle we can use bioplastics for a vast majority of the things we use plastics for.

How close are we? Enter a second article that claims that the demand for bioplastics should rise to 900,000 metric tons in 2013. The most important driver, according to the study, is an expected continuation of high prices for crude oil and natural gas.

Of course, nobody can predict the future, and there is always a "conservative" and an "optimistic" view.

According to an article posted on ecochamber.com,

California-based company Cereplast has revealed that it is developing breakthrough technology to transform algae into bioplastics, and predicts that it could replace 50% or more of the petroleum content used in traditional plastic resins.

According to Frederic Scheer, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Cereplast, "Based on our own efforts, as well as recent commitments by major players in the algae field, we believe that algae has the potential to become one of the most important green feedstocks for biofuels, as well as bioplastics."

Polystyrene. It's those firm, oddly-shaped foam pieces that fit around the computer or television when you first take it out of the box. It can be used to make plates and cups. (You can find a fun introduction to the material here.)

In one of its forms, it looks like tiny puffy white beads pressed together into a solid, hard shape. And normally, those tiny puffy white balls are made from petroleum.

But what if they weren't?

Gregory Glenn and Simon Hodson have developed a new technique for processing starch plastic that yields an end result much like polystyrene foam.

According to the article, the process works generally like this:

1. A standard plastic resin extruder is used to heat and mix starch and other all-natural compounds.
2. The extruder squeezes out long strings, called "thermoplastic melt,"
3. These strings are later cut into small beads about half the size of a marble
4. The beads are put into the cavity of a heated mold to press them into the desired shape
5. The heat mold process causes the beads to puff and expand until they press against eachother, creating a strong matrix that's much like the bead matrix of polystyrene foams.

When you compost your PLA plastic products, you are working to create a closed "cradle to cradle" loop for the material:

1. Corn, processed to make...
2. Lactic Acid, polymerized to make...
3. PLA, which is used to create
4. PLA Products, which are
5. Used, and then
6. Disposed of, when it is
7. Composted, returning to the soil to grow more
8. Corn.... go to #1

This is a pretty long loop (and also inefficient, from an energy perspective).

One way to shorten this loop would be to recycle, as we do with regular plastics:

1. Corn, processed to make...
2. Lactic Acid, polymerized to make...
3. PLA, which is used to create
4. PLA Products, which are
5. Used, and then
6. Recycled, where it is
7. Mashed up into PLA... go to #3

This is "mechanical recycling". The problem with this is, PLA doesn't recycle as nicely or easily as regular plastic. There are difficulties with getting a nice-looking, pure product.

So what can we do? LOOPLA (by Galactic) has a possible answer: chemical recycling.

The LOOPLA process can provide a major short-cut that increases the efficiency of the cradle-to-cradle PLA loop:

1. Corn, processed to make...
2. Lactic Acid, polymerized to make...
3. PLA, which is used to create
4. PLA Products, which are
5. Used, and then
6. Sent to a LOOPLA plant, where it is
7. Broken down into Lactic Acid, go to #2

Although this process is still cutting-edge and in its experimental and testing phase, it promises to provide a real answer: it promises to be cost efficient, and provides a mechanism that will allow us to keep re-cycling the same feedstock around and around... each time producing PLA products that are exactly the same quality as products made from virgin PLA.

Plastics News has a great article about new efforts to create standards and specifications for "bio-based" food packaging.

The main point of this is to prevent "greenwashing" and all of the false claims out there by some manufacturers that claim to be "green" or "biodegradable" when they really are not. They talk about ideas for certification and standards for labeling packaging at different levels (gold, silver, etc).

Ideally, they say, they want to work toward a world where we have three dumpster options: recyclable, compostable, and other trash.

Midcromidas, Inc. has turned its green eye on wastewater, and it is seeing gold. The company has developed a strain of microbes that can convert the carbon in wastewater into PHA (polyhydroxylalkanoate), a high performance plastic. PHA biodegrades quickly in compost piles and landfills, but otherwise it behaves the same or better than conventional petroleum-based plastic. It resists water and odor permeation, and it holds up under high temperature and exposure to sun. As a sustainable alternative to petroleum as a plastics feedstock, wastewater could be setting the gold standard.

Using municipal wastewater virtually guarantees a steady supply of feedstock rich in carbon from human waste. Aside from the potential for long term price stability and potential for managing global warming through carbon sequestration, the many advantages of wastewater-to-bioplastics over petroleum include easing pressure on landfills, converting a municipal waste disposal liability into a marketable asset, reducing the amount of petroleum-based plastic in the waste stream, and virtually eliminating environmental disasters related to oil spills and accidents. Add the logistical and job-creation advantages of siting bioplastic manufacturing facilities near the feedstock source, and it's a no-brainer.

This is a biodegradable plastic that seems to have all of the upsides of well-known bioplastics, but is made from waste, instead of corn or potatoes.

Pay special attention to the list of benefits of this kind of plastic. A lot of people who argue against bioplastic want you to think that the only thing bioplastic has to offer is that it is biodegradable. This is far from the truth.

We all know the normal list of reasons to like bio-plastics. They reduce our dependence on oil, they are made from renewable resources, they don't goober-up the environment with non-biodegradable waste, and so on.

But now we have another reason: bioplastic packaging can actually have a beneficial effect on produce. More specifically, using bioplastic packaging may improve the shelf-life of some produce by 50%.

From the article:

"We have as a company started with the application of bioplastics because we want to stand out for our quality and are very keen to conserve the environment. After we solved the initial problems, it was surprising to find that the potatoes had a much longer shelf life with no adverse effect on the quality," said Jaap Kodde, director and owner of Flevostar. "We also found that by using bioplastic no condensation formed inside the packaging because the packaging 'breathes'. Droplets of water which come into contact with a fresh product such as potatoes lead to faster rotting and reduction in quality."

There has been so much focus in the industry on being able to replicate properties of traditional plastics, like high moisture barrier, they seem to overlook the fact that these properties aren't always actually desirable.

Meet Sunyuan Bioproducts, Ltd, a manufacturer of bioplastic products for food services.

It's not a big company: 120 workers, 10 researchers. Think of them as a small "specialty shop" dedicated to doing one thing, and doing it right: bioplastic cutlery.

You can order items in corn-starch (PLA), plant-starch (PLM) or sugarcane. You can order utensils, plates, bowls, trays, and clamshells in various shapes and sizes. The products are heat-resistant up to 100 centigrade, and they even take custom branding requests if you want a logo added for your company or event.

And they are all certified ISO14851, OK Compost, EN13432, and Non-GMO certificate. These are real bioplastics: biodegradable, compostable, and made from renewable resources.

You can find out more at one of their two websites: naturecutlery.com or bio-sy.com.

Teijin LTD has announced the world's first completely bioplastic eyeglasses frames.

Why is this cool?

"Although acetate is commonly used for the plastic parts of eyeglasses, contact with cosmetics or hair-styling products can result in bleaching. Acetate also tends to warp under high heat and can cause skin rashes. The bioplastic polylactide has been used for eyeglass nose pads because its antibacterial properties help to avoid rashes, but conventional polylactide has not been used for other parts such as frames and temples because of insufficient heat resistance."

The material produced by Teijin LTD, Biofront , isn't just any PLA. It is a stereocomplex PLA, meaning that it mixes the standard Poly-L-lacticacid polymer with their enantiomer poly-D-lacticacid polymer. This combination gives the resulting "stereocomplex" material different properties; specifically, and importantly, it has a melting point of 210 degrees, some 40 degrees higher than that of conventional PLA and putting it on par with PBT, a leading engineering plastic. BIOFRONT also is highly resistant to bleaching and bacteria, making it ideal for the plastic parts of eyeglasses.

Meet Variety Global Business Group, or VGB Group for short. VGB Group is a collaboration project between John Pitre (CEO) and John Lin (President), entrepeneurs from the United States and China (respectively) who are working together to create and distribute corn-based vacuum-formed dinnerware and other bioplastic products.

According to a recent press release, John Pitre has been visiting various communities in the U.S. looking for sites to build 9 new plants for producing their bioplastic products.

Although VGB is based in Houston, it is working together with Dongguan Honghao High-New Technical Development Co. to expand its technology to North America. Dongguan Honghao opened in 2000 to manufacture food containers from biodegradable corn starch, and to sell its turnkey production lines to other companies that also want to make products from bioplastics.

So keep an eye out for this new company, another place you can buy bioplastic products.

Now rainy days can be less gloomy and more fun! Cheer up with the Spud Raincoat. The waterproof coat is made from potato starch and other natural source bioplastics, and it's 100% compostable and biodegradable. But don’t worry, it won’t start to break down with the first heavy rain. It's only biodegradable under specific circumstances, like planting it in the ground!