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A new fully degradable polymer has been developed in the US
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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A group of chemists from the USA have found a new polymer material that can not only be used to produce various materials, but can also be recycled without harming the environment. The researchers propose recycling plastic into molecular building blocks, thereby giving plastic products a second life. Today, in a number of countries, plastic products that have outlived their usefulness are sent for recycling, where they are used to make useful products, but most of them end up in landfills or the ocean.
There is also degradable plastic that decomposes under certain conditions (for example, polylactic acid), but even this alternative has some drawbacks - the recycling methods that exist today do not allow the decomposition process to be carried out without the formation of harmful products.
The goal of American chemists was to find a plastic that would be suitable for recycling and would be biodegradable. During the work, experts studied the molecules of one of the substitutes for petroleum products (the US Department of Energy included this substitute in the list of those that best meet all the parameters).
γ-hydroxybutyric acid lactone has been considered by scientists as a material for producing building blocks for modern plastics, but the substance is thermally stable, a property that has prevented scientists from combining it into a chain of repeating monomers to form plastic.
According to Professor of Chemistry Evgen Chen, in previous reports all the researchers' conclusions boiled down to the fact that this monomer does not deserve the attention of scientists. All the chemists who worked with lactone of y-hydroxybutyric acid assured that it would not be possible to produce a polymer from it, but Professor Chen and his colleagues suspected that there were some inaccuracies in the reports.
The researchers began working with y-hydroxybutyric acid lactone and as a result obtained not only a polymer, but also managed to make it take various forms (cyclic, linear). In their work, the scientists needed catalysts, both metal-based and metal-free, which allowed them to obtain a polyester with double poly gamma-butyrolactone. In the process of further work, the researchers realized that when the material is heated, it is transformed into its original state in about an hour (a cyclic polymer requires heating at a temperature of 300 ºС, a linear one – 220 ºС), in other words, the new material is biodegradable and does not harm the environment, unlike the plastic products used today.
According to the research team, the monomer used in their work is a full-fledged replacement for the bioplastic P4HB, which is widely used commercially. P4HB is more expensive and complex to produce than most plastics. Professor Chen's team suggested that their cheaper and more practical option for plastic production will become widespread.
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