Researchers at Berkeley Lab have used bacteria to bring biorenewability to recyclable plastics.
Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab
Scientists engineered microbes to make the ingredients for recyclable plastics – replacing finite, polluting petrochemicals with sustainable alternatives. The new approach shows that renewable, recyclable plastics are not only possible, but also outperform those from petrochemicals
Key Takeaways
- Researchers engineered E. coli to turn sugar from plants into the raw materials for biorenewable plastics.
- Those biorenewable plastics are called PDKs, a new type of plastic that can be efficiently recycled over and over again.
- Replacing petrochemicals with the bio alternative expanded the PDK’s working temperature, opening applications in the auto industry and beyond.
- With even modest improvements, using bio alternatives could be both greener and cheaper than petrochemicals in the near-term.
Plastic waste is a problem. Most plastics can’t be recycled, and many use finite, polluting petrochemicals as the basic ingredients. But that’s changing. In a study published today in Nature Sustainability, researchers successfully engineered microbes to make biological alternatives for the starting ingredients in an infinitely recyclable plastic known as poly(diketoenamine), or PDK.
The finding comes from collaboration among experts at three facilities at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab): the Molecular Foundry, the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and the Advanced Light Source.
“This is the first time that bioproducts have been integrated to make a PDK that is predominantly bio-based,” said Brett Helms, staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry who led the project. “And it’s the first time that you see a bio-advantage over using petrochemicals, both with respect to the material’s properties and the cost of producing it at scale.”
Unlike traditional plastics, PDK can be repeatedly deconstructed into pristine building blocks and formed into new products with no loss in quality. PDKs initially used building blocks derived from petrochemicals, but those ingredients can be redesigned and produced with microbes instead. Now, after four years of effort, collaborators have manipulated E. coli to turn sugars from plants into some of the starting materials – a molecule known as triacetic acid lactone, or bioTAL – and produced a PDK with roughly 80% bio-content.
“We’ve demonstrated that the pathway to 100% bio-content in recyclable plastics is feasible,” said Jeremy Demarteau, a project scientist on the team contributing to biopolymer development. “You’ll see that from us in the future.”
PDKs can be used for a variety of products, including adhesives, flexible items like computer cables or watch bands, building materials, and “tough thermosets,” rigid plastics made through a curing process. Researchers were surprised to find that incorporating the bioTAL into the material expanded its working temperature range by up to 60 degrees Celsius compared to the petrochemical version. This opens the door to using PDKs in items that need specific working temperatures, including sports gear and automotive parts such as bumpers or dashboards.
Solving the plastic waste problem
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that we globally produce about 400 million tons of plastic waste every year, and that number is predicted to climb to more than 1 billion tons by 2050. Of the 7 billion tons of plastic waste already created, only about 10 percent has been recycled, while most is discarded into landfills or burned.
“We can’t keep using our dwindling supply of fossil fuels to feed this insatiable desire for plastics,” said Jay Keasling, a professor at UC Berkeley, senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area, and the CEO of JBEI. “We want to help solve the plastic waste problem by creating materials that are both biorenewable and circular – and providing an incentive for companies to use them. Then people could have the products they need for the time they need them, before those items are transformed into something new.”
The study released today also builds on a 2021 environmental and technological analysis, which showed that PDK plastic could be commercially competitive with conventional plastics if produced at a large scale.
“Our new results are extremely encouraging,” said Corinne Scown, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area and a vice president at JBEI. “We found that with even modest improvements to the production process, we could soon be making bio-based PDK plastics that are both cheaper and emit less CO2 than those made with fossil fuels.”
Those improvements would include speeding up the rate at which microbes convert sugars to bioTAL, using bacteria that can transform a wider variety of plant-derived sugars and other compounds, and powering the facility with renewable energy.
Original Article: Making Renewable, Infinitely Recyclable Plastics Using Bacteria
More from: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | Joint BioEnergy Institute
The Latest Updates from Bing News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Infinitely recyclable plastics,
- Exclusive: inside Honda's new concept EV that has an infinitely recyclable design – and looks like a Honda e
Every year, the beautiful gardens of Milan’s Museo Diocesano are turned into a hive of activity, with established brands and start-ups showcasing innovative and often environmentally-conscious ...
- Pro-plastic lobbyist presence at UN talks is 'troubling,' say advocates
Environmentalist groups are sounding the alarm about a steep increase in the number of pro-plastic lobbyists at the UN pollution talks taking place this week.
- UN PLASTICS PLANS ARE UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNREALISTIC
Ottawa welcomes 4,000 delegates from the United Nations to discuss how they will oversee a reduction and even possible elimination of plastics from our lives. The key problem is no one has ever ...
- Planet vs. plastics: Ska Brewing installs paperboard can collar machine
Ska Brewing announced the installation of the CanCollar Corsair machine, a first in North America for craft breweries, provided by sustainable packaging leaders WestRock.
- China stopped taking our plastic. Now America is drowning in it.
America has long had a plastic problem. It's an urgent question — what do we do with the 40 million tons of plastic waste we produce annually? One year of plastic waste is roughly enough to smother ...
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Biorenewable plastics
- Mergers & Acquisitions Tracker
Holland Co. Ravago Group has acquired a majority stake in M. Holland Co. 8/21/2023 Pendulum Corp. MasonWays Plastics LLC Manufacturing investor New Pendulum Corp. has acquired rotational molder ...
- Replacing plastics with alternatives is worse for greenhouse gas emissions in most cases, study finds
Substituting plastics with alternative materials is likely to result in increased GHG emissions, according to research from the University of Sheffield. The study by Dr. Fanran Meng from Sheffield ...
- NPE's origin story, promoting and defending plastics
It has since been updated. Clare retired in 2021. Can you believe that at one time plastic was too fantastic for its own good? It seems that so much effort went into promoting plastic as the “material ...
- There’s an Explosion of Plastic Waste. Big Companies Say ‘We’ve Got This.’
Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times Supported by By Hiroko Tabuchi By 2025, Nestle promises not to use any plastic in its products that isn’t recyclable. By that same year, L’Oreal says all ...
- Amazon still has a serious plastic waste problem in the US
Despite making pledges to cut down on plastic packaging, a new report from the nonprofit conservation organization Oceana estimates that Amazon’s plastic waste has continued to grow in the US.