Welcome (or welcome back), dear Reader! Resonating with the theme of chemical engineering, this article is about Polymer Engineering and how it’s being made sustainable, as you’ve probably read from the title. But we’re not here to tell you about things you already know. Read on to learn about polymer engineering, how and why we’re making it sustainable, and the challenges we’re facing in doing so!
What is Polymer Engineering?
First off- polymers are huge compounds made up from smaller, basic units called monomers. They can be natural or synthetic, and are everywhere; from your shampoo to your food. Some examples of natural polymers are proteins and starches, and some synthetic ones are nylon, polyester and other plastics. Polymer Engineering is the process of incorporating such polymers into items or products with good functionality, while improving certain chemical or physical properties. This yields a product with ideal characteristics such as toughness, resistance to heat and chemical attack.
Polymers have an incredible importance not only in our lives, but in the industrial world too. As we mentioned before, they’re everywhere- aircraft, aerospace, sports equipment, 3D printing, water purification, circuit boards, even bulletproof vests, and these are only a fraction of their uses in the world!
Sustainable biopolymers
Most polymers are usually made from fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is released on burning these fossil fuels, which in turn causes global warming. The growing concerns with the environmental conditions have increased the importance of sustainable polymers. Sustainable polymers are of two types - natural polymers (for example cellulose and starch ; they are also known as renewable biopolymers) and synthetic bio- based polymers which are made from biomass. Wondering about the chemistry behind these sustainable biopolymers? Well here’s an insight!
Polymers are molecules that have a long chain made up of smaller repeating units (monomeric units/monomers). Natural biopolymers are polymers that are made from units such as nucleotides and peptides. Some examples of natural biopolymers include:
Polysaccharides - these are polymers made when monosaccharides (monomeric units) are joined together by glycosidic linkage -a covalent bond that joins a carbohydrate with another group.
Polypeptides - polymers made when amino acids are linked together by an amide linkage.
Synthetic biopolymers are made from these natural polymers. Polylactic acid (PLA), polyvinyl alcohols (PVA) and polybutylene are some examples of synthetic polymers. These polymers are chemically modified in order to make synthetic biopolymers.
Challenges of Sustainable Polymers
The engineering of biopolymers, while environmentally friendly, has a lot of challenges that need to be overcome by those working in the field. The process of manufacturing them is quite complex. Biopolymers degrade very rapidly, especially under humid conditions, making them much more difficult to work with than traditional polymers. Moreover, biopolymers do not gain properties like toughness, shape and size as easily as traditional polymers. These challenges all amount to sustainable polymer engineering being much more costly than the engineering of traditional polymers.
With this we come to the end of our article. We will come back with another interesting article soon, so make sure that you don’t miss it ! Till then - Goodbye !
Written by:
Mythri Subash and Maheshi Parwani
Bibliography:
Comments