Waste oil can be used to make biodegradable bioplastics

According to a study reported by the University of Wolverhampton scientists at the Fall Meeting of the Institute of General Microbiology on September 3, the use of a bacterium that uses waste cooking oil, commonly known as cooking oil, as a raw material can be synthesized with higher efficiency. Biodegradable bioplastics, once scaled up, can not only reduce environmental pollution but also provide medical implants with suitable high quality plastics.

The polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) family synthesized by a variety of bacteria is a biodegradable bio-plastic, of which poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is the most commonly used, and promotion of this biodegradable plastic will help reduce environmental pollution. .

At present, the raw material used by bacteria to produce this high-quality bioplastic in large-scale fermenters is glucose, which has a high cost and severely restricts the commercialization of bioplastics. New research shows that the use of waste cooking oil as raw material can reduce the cost of plastic production.

The researchers explained: “We produce bioplastic bacteria, Ralstonia strain H16, which produces 3 times more PHB in oil than glucose in more than 48 hours. In collaboration with the University of Birmingham, UK The results of electrospinning experiments showed that the plastic nanofibers produced in oil have very low crystallinity, which means that the plastic is more suitable for medical applications.” Previous studies have shown that PHB is biodegradable and non-toxic, Microcapsules that can be used as drug delivery in the treatment of tumors can also be used as medical implants.

The next challenge for the research team is to appropriately expand the scale of the trial to achieve large-scale production of bioplastics in the industrial sector.