Random news from the Archive Eco-friendly plastic from fish waste
10.04.2021
Bioplastics could be used for almost the same purposes as conventional polyurethane, says team leader Francesca Kerton of Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN).
Plastic based on fish waste is environmentally friendly. In addition, the invention solves the problem of recycling these food waste. After all, fish heads, bones, skin and intestines, usually sent to landfill, can be turned into a harmless, biodegradable material.
The novelty will replace polyurethane, which today can be found everywhere: in shoes, clothes, refrigerators, building materials, etc. At the same time, polyurethane is obtained from crude oil and phosgene, it has a large carbon footprint and slowly decays.
To produce the new material, the researchers used fat extracted from pieces of salmon left over from industrial processing.
Chemists have developed a method for converting fish oil into a polyurethane-like polymer. First, they added oxygen to the fat to form epoxides. The epoxides were then combined with carbon dioxide. And the resulting molecules were combined with amines containing nitrogen, resulting in a new material.
The new plastic has no fish smell.
|