Scientists turn plastic bottles into vanillin to counteract the plastic pollution that is choking the planet
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himScientists transform used plastic bottles into vanilla flavoring using special bacteria to counteract the plastic pollution that is choking the planet. It is the first time that a chemical product has been made from plastic waste.
Plastic currently loses around 95% of its value as a material after a single use. For this reason, converting used plastic bottles into more profitable materials could make the recycling process more effective and attractive for companies and effectively counter the plague of plastic pollution. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have developed a mutant enzyme capable of destroying the plastic polymers that make up the bottles into simple units, which are then chemically transformed into XNUMX teaspoon vanilla extract. About one million plastic bottles are sold worldwide every minute in the world and only 14% of these are recycled - generally they are transformed into opaque fibers and used in the textile sector: this is the second most common plastic waste in the oceans after bags. .
Vanillin is used extensively in the food and cosmetics industries, and is a chemical also imported to create drugs and cleaning products. It is therefore a very popular product - world demand is growing more and more and in 2018 it was 37.000 tons, much higher than that obtained from naturally occurring vanilla pods: in fact, about 85% of vanillin is currently chemically synthesized from fossil fuel derivatives.
@ Green Chemistry
This is the first example of using a biological system to transform plastic waste into high value chemicals - he explains Joanna Sadler, which led the research - and could have very interesting implications for the circular economy. Our work challenges the perception of plastic as a problem and instead demonstrates its use as a resource for the creation of high value products.
For this study, the researchers used E-coli bacteria to turn plastic into vanillin. They heated a microbial 'broth' to 37 ° C for a day (the same conditions used to ferment beer) and this simple process made it possible to transform 79% of the simple units in which the plastic polymers had been broken down into vanillin.
@ Green Chemistry
Fonte: Green Chemistry
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