SBIR Phase I: Expanding the Sustainability of Bio-plastics and PLA by Postponing End-of-Life through the use of Reactive Extrusion Chemistries

这个小企业创新第一阶段项目建议解决一系列生物塑料，特别是聚乳酸(PLA)的报废管理问题。今天由解放军制造的大多数产品在使用寿命结束时被填埋或焚烧。尽管聚乳酸是一种可堆肥的生物塑料，但美国严重缺乏工业堆肥基础设施。此外，由于在塑料再加工过程中机械性能的显著损失，聚乳酸通常不会被回收。在拟议的工作中，将使用反应挤出工艺回收废弃的聚乳酸，以生产超支化聚乳酸聚合物。超支化的聚乳酸表现出比纯净的线性聚乳酸更好的力学性能。提供超支化的反应挤出工艺具有成本效益和可扩展性，使有生存能力的企业能够出售回收的聚乳酸，并将工艺技术许可给其他加工商。拟议的研究将展示如何将工业后和消费后的废物聚乳酸转化为具有更好机械性能的超支化聚乳酸。这一过程将通过将废流转化为产品，显著提高废旧聚乳酸的价值。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种重要的、新颖的、具有成本效益的方法并将其商业化，通过为使用最广泛的生物塑料聚乳酸增加价值来满足使塑料更可持续发展的迫切需求。用成本较低的原料创造出机械性能更好的聚乳酸，最终将扩大商业应用。目前，解放军在美国的市场规模约为3亿英镑，并以每年约15%的速度增长。使用聚乳酸的商业塑料加工商将能够用回收的聚乳酸取代或补充原始聚乳酸的使用。此外，通过提供一种具有商业吸引力的方法来回收聚乳酸，这一新工艺将有效地激励回收商将聚乳酸从其废物来源中移除。目前回收聚乳酸的唯一有竞争力的技术是使用现有的没有超支化的聚合物回收工艺，但这些方法无法提供具有有用性能的回收材料。回收聚乳酸的其他选择包括堆肥和化学回收回到乳酸。这两种技术都提供了一种合理的方法来处理寿命结束时的聚乳酸；然而，只有通过超支化回收聚乳酸提供了一种显著延长寿命终结的方法。

This Small Business Innovation Phase I project proposes to address the issue of end-of-life management of a family of bioplastics, specifically polylactic acid (PLA). The majority of products today manufactured from PLA are land filled or incinerated once reaching their end of life. Although PLA is a compostable bioplastic, there is a significant lack of industrial composting infrastructure in the United States. Furthermore, PLA is not typically recycled due to a significant loss of mechanical properties during reprocessing of the plastic. In the proposed work, a reactive extrusion process will be used to recycle waste PLA to produce hyperbranched PLA polymers. Hyperbranched PLA exhibits mechanical properties that are improved relative to virgin, linear PLA. The reactive extrusion process to impart hyperbranching is cost-effective and scalable, enabling a viable business to sell recycled PLA and license the process technology to other processors. The proposed research will demonstrate how both post-industrial and post-consumer waste PLA can be converted into hyperbranched PLAs having improved mechanical properties. This process will significantly enhance the value of scrap PLA, by converting a waste stream into a product. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the development and commercialization of an important, novel, and cost effective way to meet the pressing need of making plastics more sustainable by adding value to the most broadly used bioplastic, PLA. Creating improved mechanical property PLAs from a lower cost feedstock will ultimately expand commercial applications. The current U.S. market for PLA is approximately 300 million pounds and growing at approximately 15% annually. Commercial plastic processors that use PLA will be able to replace or supplement use of virgin PLA with recycled PLA. Additionally, by providing a commercially-attractive method to recycle PLA, this new process will effectively incentivize recyclers to remove PLA from their waste sources. The only current competitive technology for recycling PLA is to use existing polymer recycling processes without hyperbranching, but these methods are unable to provide recycled materials with useful properties. Other options for reclaiming PLA include composting and chemical recycling back to lactic acid. Both of these technologies offer a reasonable way to dispose of PLA at its end of life; however, only recycling of PLA by hyperbranching offers a way to significantly extend the end of life.