Afbeelding
PHAs are a family of biodegradable and bio-based polymers produced by bacteria from organic feedstock. This means they can be made from a wide range of different raw materials that could not otherwise have been valorised, such as industrial wastewater from potato processing. In addition, they behave like thermoplastics, meaning they are versatile and can be processed in different ways to make different materials and/or products. Together, these factors make PHAs promising biopolymers.
Reason
However, there is one area where PHAs do not yet perform well and that is in the area of flexibility, as PHAs tend to be hard and brittle. While this is not a problem for most applications, it means that there is currently no way to make a water/airtight seal for a PHA product without using silicone, a non-biodegradable material. Therefore, there is a market need for a fully biodegradable elastic polymer that can replace silicone in seals for otherwise biodegradable products.
One of the important structural features of PHAs is the carbon chain that forms the backbone of the polymer. There seems to be a pattern to this chain, namely that the longer the chain is in the PHA's monomeric unit, the more flexible the PHA is: Polyhydroxyhexanoate (PHH) - 6 carbon chain is more flexible than Polyhydroxyhexanoate (PHH) - 4 carbon chain. This raises the question of how far this trend can be extended. Can the carbon chain, in the monomer unit, be 20 atoms long?
What problem does the project solve?
In this project, the aim is to develop potential methods to make elastic PHAs. This can be achieved by giving currently available PHAs elastic properties by adding additives, or by producing entirely new PHAs with elastic properties as standard.
Who is the project team?
NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences
RUG
How is the project team tackling this?
The project has two parts. The first part is the literature review. In this part, the focus is on gathering information on what is already known about different types of PHAs related to elasticity and how this can be translated into a research design in this project.
The second part focuses on identifying the most promising methods for producing elastic PHAs and developing these methods ready for testing in phase 2 of the project.
