Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste ...

Chair of Waste Management and Emissions
Development of new technologies for production
and application of plastics from renewable resources.
The annual output of petrochemical plastics of the global
production from crude oil is more than 300 million
tonnes. Plastics are used in numerous applications for
our daily life. But after their useful life as plastics materials
they will be disposed in landfills, dumpsites, or
delivered to composting plants or to incinerators. The
degradability in general is very slow, in the case of
landfills we are expecting to last hundreds of years. In
incinerators they are used for producing energy, but
with this oxidising process plastics from crude oils are
contributing to increasing amounts of the greenhouse
gas carbon dioxide (CO 2
).
Degradability of plastics is known as a non biotic process
with the influence of UV, light and oxygen. A second
way for degradation is the biological influence
of micro organisms. Also some of the petrochemical
plastics can be biologically degraded, e.g. polyesters.
But also in this case we will have increasing amounts
of the greenhouse gas CO 2
.
Degradability of lignin based bioplastic - Respirometric
Test
Therefore during the last years new plastics were developed,
plastics from renewable resources and biologically
degradable by micro organisms.
Our own project research was done with a very new
degradable plastic from lignin, a by-product in the cellulose
pulping process for papermaking .The degradability
of this new product based on lignin was tested
in aerobic conditions with respirometric tests and also
in a composting process. The velocity of the degradation
process is depending on the composition of the
plastics. In the respirometric tests we found for the
different products a degradation rate of about 30% up
to 80 % in a time of 80 days, using longer testing time,
the degradation rate was increasing up to 50 % up to
100 % in 120 days.
Plastics have an important impact on the environment.
Bioplastics can be produced from renewable raw material
and are partially biologically degradable. Currently
the production of bioplastics is relatively low. In the
case of bigger amounts this material should be integrated
in the waste management. The new bioplastics
based on lignin that we have analyzed could be considered
as well degradable in the respirometric tests.
The usability for many applications seems to be really
good. As it is a material from renewable resources, the
degradation process will not give any influence to the
greenhouse effect.
Degradability of lignin based bioplastic - Respirometric
Test
Sponsorship:
AIF
Projekt partner:
• Fa. Tecnaro GmbH
• Fa. Bauer Kunststofftechnik
• Institut für Siedlungswasserbau, Wassergüteund
Abfallwirtschaft; Lehrstuhl für Abfallwirtschaft
und Abluft (ISWA, AFW)
Duration:
April 2008 - March 2010
Contact:
Dr.-Ing. Klaus Fischer
Dipl.-Ing. Jingjing Huang
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