Compatibilization in bio-based and biodegradable polymer blends

By B. Imre, B. Pukánszky. 2013

552 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The production and use of biopolymers increases continuously with a very high rate thus all information on these materials is very important. This feature article first defines the terms used in the area then discusses the distinction between degradation and biodegradation as well as their importance for practice. Biopolymers often have inferior properties compared to commodity polymers. Modification is a way to improve properties and achieve property combinations required for specific applications. One technique is blending which allows considerable improvement in the impact resistance of brittle polymers. However, further study is needed on the miscibility–structure–property relationships of these materials to utilize all potentials of the approach. The chemical structure of biopolymers opens up possibilities to their reactive modification. Copolymerization, grafting, trans-esterification, the use of reactive coupling agents have all been utilized with success to achieve polymers and blends with improved properties. Several examples are shown for the various approaches and their outcome. Biopolymers and their blends are applied successfully in several areas from agriculture to consumer goods, packaging and automotive.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Biomaterials, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/626d2c3c05bb65a0db6e5ccb03f00e714875cfc6

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In Automotive Engineering

In Biomaterials

In Pollution

Citations in the corpus

Biodegradable polymer films from seaweed polysaccharides: A review on cellulose as a reinforcement material (2017, background): “The compatibility of polymers depends on their molecular weight, chemical structures, conformations and hydration behaviours [3, 110].”
Optimising Ductility of Poly(Lactic Acid)/Poly(Butylene Adipate-co-Terephthalate) Blends Through Co-continuous Phase Morphology (2018, methodology): “To toughen PLA, a number of methods such as melt blending, plasticization, copolymerization and incorporation of impact modifiers have been applied [6, 7].”
Phase Structure, Compatibility, and Toughness of PLA/PCL Blends: A Review (2019, result): “Authors of the above studies and authors of a review considering these results (Imre and Pukánszky, 2013) concluded that PLA and PCL are incompatible polymers, i.”
Biodegradation of Synthetic and Natural Plastic by Microorganisms (2017, background): “They can also be produced by a range of microorganisms [14].”
Starch Based Bio-Plastics: The Future of Sustainable Packaging (2018, background): “Bio-based polymers have been shown to be a viable alternative to replace these fossil sources while also having environmental advantages, such as decreasing toxic emissions [16].”
Processing and characterization of plasticized PLA/PHB blends for biodegradable multiphase systems (2015, background): “Both, the glass transition and the processing temperatures of the material decrease, thus enabling the melt processing of heat-sensitive polymers at lower temperatures [4, 5, 11, 12, 15, 16].”
Mechanical recycling of polylactide, upgrading trends and combination of valorization techniques (2016, methodology): “Incorporation of polymers into recycled PLA The incorporation of polymers into recycled PLA or into virgin PLA has to be addressed in terms of compatibility and miscibility [101].”
Natural Fibre Composites and Their Applications: A Review (2018, background): “In the literature the term bio-polymer has multiple and overlapping meanings, including but not limited to: bio-based, biodegradable or both [1,3,16,17].”
Ternary PLA–PHB–Limonene blends intended for biodegradable food packaging applications (2014, background): “It is also a brittle polymer, as its enzymatic polymerization leads to the formation of macromolecules with highly ordered stereochemical structure, as a result large crystallinity [12].”