How can 'grow' ... plastic?

It should be emphasized that we live in a ' bottle neck '. Meaning, after many centuries of natural resources, people are approaching the bottleneck, in which resources are gradually exhausted and the demand and population are increasing. In about 80 years, global oil reserves will be exhausted; Natural gas exists for 70 years and coal for about 700 years.

Everything related to natural energy is reviewed, including plastic. Many large companies have actually been investigating this issue for several years, including Cargill (giant agricultural group), Dow Chemical (specialized chemistry). The two companies have cooperated in a research project to extract sugar from corn and some other plants to form a plastic product called polylactide (PLA).

(Photo: Alphap.com) This process occurs as follows : Using microorganisms to turn sugar into lactic acid and connect lactic acid molecules to plastic chains (similar to polyethylene terephthalate - PET, petrochemical plastic used in many products including soft drink bottles).

Another chemical company - Imperial Chemical Industries - is also working on making polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) plastic. Like PLA, PHA is made from vegetable sugar and can biodegrade. In the case of PHA, ralstonia eutropha is used to turn sugar into plastic.

A more ambitious project is located in Monsanto Agricultural Corporation's lab: growing plastic plants, following a direct and non-indirect process of taking plastic directly from plants such as PLA and PHA. The core of this study is genetic modification so that plants can synthesize their own plastics.

So far, the impossibility of the project of growing plastic plants is not a technical issue but a cost. In the most recent survey, Tillman U. Gerngross of Dartmouth University said that to get 1 kg of PHA from maize, 300% more energy than 29 megajoules is needed in the production of equivalent quantities when making polyethylene ( PE) from crude oil. In other words, 2.65 kg of crude oil is needed to produce 1 kg of PHA! However, despite many challenges, research into growing plastic plants is still ongoing, in the plan to create ' green plastic ' (green plastic), which helps limit the use of oil resources. while protecting the environment.

PHUC CAM