Valorising cassava peel waste into plasticized polyhydroxyalkanoates blended with polycaprolactone with controllable thermal and mechanical properties

Emma Martinaud, Carmen Hierro-Iglesias, James Hammerton, Bawan Hadad, Robert Evans, Jakub Sacharczuk, Daniel Lester, Matthew J. Derry, Paul D. Topham, Alfred Fernandez-Castane*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Approximately 99% of plastics produced worldwide were produced by the petrochemical industry in 2019 and it is predicted that plastic consumption may double between 2023 and 2050. The use of biodegradable bioplastics represents an alternative solution to petroleum-based plastics. However, the production cost of biopolymers hinders their real-world use. The use of waste biomass as a primary carbon source for biopolymers may enable a cost-effective production of bioplastics whilst providing a solution to waste management towards a carbon–neutral and circular plastics economy. Here, we report for the first time the production of poly(hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) with a controlled molar ratio of 2:1 3-hydroxybutyrate:3-hydroxvalerate (3HB:3HV) through an integrated pre-treatment and fermentation process followed by alkaline digestion of cassava peel waste, a renewable low-cost substrate, through Cupriavidus necator biotransformation. PHBV was subsequently melt blended with a biodegradable polymer, polycaprolactone (PCL), whereby the 30:70 (mol%) PHBV:PCL blend exhibited an excellent balance of mechanical properties and higher degradation temperatures than PHBV alone, thus providing enhanced stability and controllable properties. This work represents a potential environmental solution to waste management that can benefit cassava processing industries (or other crop processing industries) whilst developing new bioplastic materials that can be applied, for example, to packaging and biomedical engineering.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3503-3515
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Polymers and the Environment
Volume32
Issue number8
Early online date27 Jan 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2024

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

  • Renewable feedstock
  • Waste valorisation
  • Biotransformation
  • Biopolymer blends
  • Tuneable properties

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