Almaden California (March 9,
2010) - IBM researchers on Tuesday said they have
discovered a way to make Earth-friendly plastic from plants that
could replace petroleum-based products tough on the
environment.
The breakthrough promises biodegradable plastics made in a way that
saves on energy, according to Chandrasekhar "Spike" Narayan, a
manager of science and technology at IBM's Almaden Research Center
in Northern California.
Almaden and Stanford University researchers said the discovery
could herald an era of sustainability for a plastics industry rife
with seemingly eternal products notorious for cramming landfills
and littering the planet.
"This discovery and new approach using organic
catalysts could lead to well-defined, biodegradable molecules made
from renewable resources in an environmentally responsible way,"
IBM said in a release.
The "green chemistry" breakthrough using "organic catalysts"
results in plastics that could be repeatedly recycled, instead of
only once as is the case with petroleum-based plastic made using
metal oxide catalysts.
Plant plastics could also be made "biocompatible" to improve the
targeting of drugs in bodies, such as cancer medicines aimed at
killing cancer cells but sparing healthy ones, according to
IBM.
"We're exploring new methods of applying technology and our
expertise in materials science to creating a sustainable,
environmentally sound future," said Almaden lab research director
Josephine Cheng.
IBM is working with scientists at King Abdulaziz City for Science
and Technology in Saudi Arabia to put the discovery to work in the
recycling of plastics used in food and beverage containers.
"We are really starting to scratch the surface of what we can do
with it," Narayan said of the process that has been demonstrated in
the lab.
Plant plastics for things such as car parts could be made at lower
costs than petroleum-based plastics while materials of soda bottle
quality are "competitive," according to Narayan.
Details of the work are in a paper published this week in the
American Chemical Society journal Macromolecules.