PolyForm: a unified approach to biodegradable polymers for fabric care formulations

这项奖学金将改变一项基本人类活动的环境足迹，即日常清洁衣服和其他纺织品。仅在英国，洗碗机和洗衣机每年就消耗3600亿升水，家庭能源费用为16亿英镑，其中大部分电力消耗在加热水上（能源节约信托，2013）。高性能的洗衣和织物护理产品可以在低温下用最少的水进行有效的清洁。它们还延长了服装的使用寿命，避免了被扔进垃圾填埋场。这些配方的性能只有通过使用合成聚合物添加剂才能实现，这些添加剂主要来自石油基来源。不幸的是，它们在环境中存在很长时间，大大降低了使用它们所带来的潜在环境效益。用可生物降解的替代品取代现有的技术，使我们有机会大大改善许多基本消费品的环境状况，但实现这一目标由于挑战的规模而变得复杂；不仅需要开发新的可持续材料，而且要确保它们在复杂的多组分配方中的功能。虽然开发可生物降解聚合物的动力很大，并建立了对它们从环境中去除的机制的理解，但仍然存在很大的知识差距，这使得预测材料的可生物降解性具有挑战性。这一困难是重新拟订过程中的一个主要瓶颈。在这里，我提出了一种统一的方法来替代洗衣和织物护理配方中的合成聚合物添加剂，结合学术和工业卓越，以充分解决挑战的范围。我的PolyForm研究员将提供可持续来源的聚合物，在洗涤剂配方中具有高水平的功能。我将同时开发新的模型和工具来评估和预测新的和现有材料的生物降解性，简化在消费品中加入高性能生物降解添加剂的过程。这些突破的影响将远远超出洗衣和织物护理领域。

This fellowship will transform the environmental footprint of an essential human activity - the routine cleaning of clothes and other textiles. In the UK alone, dishwashers and washing machines use 360 billion litres of water each year and cost households £1.6bn in energy bills, with the majority of the electricity consumed in heating water (Energy Saving Trust, 2013). High-performance laundry and fabric care products enable effective cleaning at low temperatures with minimal quantities of water. They also extend garment lifetimes, avoiding their disposal in landfill sites. The performance of these formulations is only possible through the use of synthetic polymer additives, primarily derived from petroleum-based sources. Unfortunately, these persist in the environment over long timescales, greatly reducing the potential environmental benefits presented by their use. Replacing current technologies with biodegradable alternatives gives us an opportunity to drastically improve the environmental profile of many essential consumer products, but achieving this goal is complicated by the scale of the challenge; requiring not only the development of new sustainable materials, but ensuring their functionality in complex, multi- component formulations. Whilst there has been significant drive to develop biodegradable polymers, and build an understanding of the mechanisms by which they are removed from the environment, there remains a substantial knowledge-gap which renders the prediction of a material's biodegradability challenging. This difficulty presents a major bottleneck in the process of reformulation. Here, I present a unified approach to the replacement of synthetic polymer additives in laundry and fabric care formulations, combining academic and industrial excellence to fully address the scope of the challenge. My PolyForm fellowship will deliver sustainably-sourced polymers capable of high levels of functionality within detergent formulations. I will simultaneously develop new models and tools to assess and predict the biodegradability of new and existing materials, streamlining the process of incorporation of high- performance biodegradable additives within consumer products. These breakthroughs will have impacts far beyond the arena of laundry and fabric care.