PolymPart: Researchers from the University of Valle de Atemajac in Zapopan, Mexico have created a biodegradable plastic from the juice of the prickly pear cactus.
The new material begins to break down after sitting in the soil for a month and when left in water, it breaks down in a matter of days. Plus, it doesn’t require crude oil like traditional plastics.
“There were some publications that spoke of different materials with which biodegradable plastics could be made, including some plants,” Sandra Pascoe Ortiz, the research professor who developed the material, told Forbes.
“In this case the nopal cactus has certain chemical characteristics with which I thought it could be feasible to obtain a polymer, that if it was combined with some other substances, all of them natural, a non-toxic biodegradable plastic would be obtained. The process is a mixture of compounds whose base is the nopal. It’s totally non-toxic, all the materials we use could be ingested both by animals or humans and they wouldn’t cause any harm.”
This means that even if any of this material made its way into the ocean, it will safely dissolve. It’s estimated that between 1.15 million to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers. Last month, divers found a plastic KFC bag from the 1970sduring an ocean clean-up off the waters off Bulcock Beach in Queensland, Australia and earlier this year, during a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench – the deepest point in the ocean – a plastic bag was found.
According to Ortiz, the project was born in a science Fair of the Department of Exact Sciences and Engineering, in the chemistry class with industrial engineering students of the career. They began to make some attempts to obtain a plastic using cactus as raw material.
“From that I decided to start a research project in a formal way. Currently in the project collaborate researchers from the University of Guadalajara in conjunction with the University of Valle de Atemajac.”
Currently, the process is still limited to the lab, but Ortiz believes it could be sped up enough to compete with conventional plastic if her operation is scaled up and moved to an industrial facility. “At this moment some tests of applications are being made, what is needed is to carry out the necessary tests in the possible applications and to go from the process in the laboratory to an industrial process.”
A number of companies have already expressed an interest and Ortiz says they are collaborating with the research to find a way to make this a large scale operation.
“I believe that it is never too late to start changing things,” Ortiz says. “Every day there is a new opportunity to do things better, so if we each do what we have to do, there is another opportunity to reverse all the damage we have done to the planet.”
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottsnowden/2019/07/14/scientist-in-mexico-creates-biodegradable-plastic-from-prickly-pear-cactus/#2414b7816c49
