Petroleum-based plastics have been invented for more than 100 years now, but their solution cycle is 300-500 years. The traditional plastics cause serious white pollution problems and bring a huge burden to the global environment, while the bioplastics such as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate) Material properties similar to traditional petrochemical plastics, can be used in more than 50% of petroleum-based plastic applications play an alternative role, can be used to make plastic bags, plastic tableware, plastic bottles and so on.
More importantly, bioplastics degrade quickly, degrade within 3-6 months of the soil, and other microbes can breed faster after eating this bioplastic, making the land more fertile.
However, the world's two most common petroleum-based plastics, polyethylene and polypropylene, have an annual production capacity of 130-140 million tons and PHA has an annual capacity of only about 50,000 tons, producing only a fraction of petroleum-based plastics.
The key reason is the cost of plastic too cheap, the production process is too mature, the amount is too large.According to the analysis, according to the current production of bioplastics (PHA) prices, about ordinary polyethylene and polypropylene 3 to 10 times.
Therefore, in order to popularize the bioplastics, the cost must be reduced, that is, how to make some microbes fat-fed at a low cost.
Professor Chen Guoqiang, a professor at the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University and a Cheung Kong Scholar, led a young team to find suitable strains of well-being and reconstruct the PHA production process with the emerging 'synthetic biology' technology to realize the total cost of production Lower than the existing technology in half, walk in the forefront of the world.
At present, they have successfully completed the pilot phase of an eight-month bio-plastics pilot of new technology industrialization and will start mass production of 5-10 million tons by 2018.
At present, PHA pellets have been applied to biodegradable plastic sheet, disposable wood flour blended and pure PHA tableware, color 3D printed silk, electrospun fibers, shopping bags and other end products:
PHA has also been found to have good medical value. It has good biocompatibility. P4HB in PHA has been approved as a surgical suture in the United States and has been clinically favored for the development of cartilage repair materials, nerve guides , Artificial esophagus and so on.