BIOPLASTICS II

Bioplastics II

Bioplastics II

The Articles

Important Topics

The articles; “Recent developments in the biopolymer industry,” written by Kolybaba, Tabil, & Panigrahi in 2004, and “Biopolymers Versus Oil-Based Polymers: The Challenge Of The 21st Century,” written by Maria and Martinez-Velon, covers the topic of biopolymers most importantly in their articles.

Purposes of Articles

Kolybaba, Tabil, & Panigrahi, in their article, “Recent developments in the biopolymer industry,” highlighted the manufacturing process and its improvement in the 21st century. They discusses that the processes used for manufacturing plastic today is less harmful as compare to the conventional procedure. The process includes the formation of plastic from fossil fuels and the product is called biopolymers. Biopolymers are produced by animal or plant material, or from micro organisms. The article was aimed to review the industry of biopolymer, outlining the different materials' progress and process, and to give the explanation of the utilized processes in their creation.

Maria and Martinez-Velon, in their article, “Biopolymers Versus Oil-Based Polymers: The Challenge Of The 21st Century,” try to accomplish the goal of identifying challenges of this century in producing oil based polymers and biopolymers. They aimed to highlight the significance of increasing demand of polymers in UK and its usage in different industries. Some disadvantages of the use of plastic that create problems for the environment and create a need for improving the process of waste management has also been presented in the article.

What is a Polymer?

A polymer is a large molecule that has the appearance of a long chain. The molecule is made up of many units-bases as like a string of pearls. Even the basic units consist of single molecules, called monomers: you can aggregate them in groups of two, three, four or more (so called dimers, trimers, tetramers, etc.) or hundreds (high polymer). A high natural polymer is cellulose, consists of many sugar units. A cotton fiber (almost pure cellulose state) for example, is formed from 3,500 monomers of sugar, while the polyvinyl chloride has a chain of 25 thousand monomers. Other polymers are rubbers and plastics, wool, and starch. Today it is possible to establish the order of monomers in the chain and modify it as you want to make polymers with different characteristics (Paul, & Robeson, 2008). How do the monomers to remain joined together to form the coarse structure of the polymer? Each “pearl necklace” is linked to the other with a chemical bond, characteristic for each polymer: once you find the suitable solvent to dissolve, the chain depolymerizes that breaks and free units. Conversely, in the polymerization, it recreates the structure.

Classification of Polymers

The polymers can be classified in various ways (Paul, & Robeson, 2008):

The polymers produced from monomers such homopolymers, which are all equal, whereas those produced from monomers represented by two or more chemical species, called copolymers.

Depending on their structure, polymer can be classified into linear, branched, or crosslinked polymers.

In relation to their properties from the point of view of the deformation, polymers are differentiated into thermoplastics, thermosets, and ...