Unlocking the thermoplastic potential of polysaccharides

A large effort is spent in all sectors to reduce the current dependence of fossil fuels and petroleum-based products.

The driving force is to meet climate change targets and ensure a sustainable and environmental future growth of today’s society.

Plastics, a ubiquitous material in today’s society, as testified by its daunting production volume of 320 million tons, pose several sustainability challenges that rapidly needs to be met.

Traditional plastic derived from fossil-based sources contribute to emissions of green-house gases and their end-of-life treatment pose serious problems if disposed in land-fill or littered in oceans or on land.

Concerted efforts focusing on routes enabling sustainable and biodegradable plastics are needed for circular bioeconomy and sustainable future.

Our project will generate physical concepts rendering polysaccharides thermoplastic, thus enabling production in current process units.

In particular, we will focus on arabinoxylan, the major polysaccharide in grass and cereals, and a modification we previously shown turns arabinoxylan thermoplastic.

Detailed understanding of the correlation between modification and polymer chain conformation, flexibility and melt behaviour is not known, in stark contrast to knowledge obtained over time on traditional polymers. In addition, biodegradability will be studied as a function of degree of modification.

The project is a collaboration between strong research environments and with industrial advisory board.