Free Resources

Introduction

 “Plastics” stand atop a pile of petrochemical based products in terms of global significance (Degli Espositi et al., 2021). Important properties like durability and cost effectiveness make plastics almost indispensable (Lear et al., 2021). They are useful both locally and industrially to man’s daily life. They show numerous applications in industrial packaging, food packaging, bottling, technology developments, platforms, medicine, and also automobiles (Yildizhan, 2021). The flipside to these numerous global benefits is the environmental concerns they bring along; plastics are not readily biodegradable and as such pose threats to global health, the immediate environment and ocean life (Narancic and O’Connor, 2019).

However, plastics from biodegradable materials are being researched and tested (Shen et al., 2020).  These new type of plastics are produced from different natural biomass and they are degradable (Rao et al., 2021).  Adjustments need to be made as the goal is to ensure production of plastics that are biodegradable, low in cost and can replace the synthetic plastics in the capacity of its daily usage (Shafqat et al., 2020).

Plastics are synthetic polymers that show similarities to natural polymers attained from plants and other biological elements (Kubowicz and Booth, 2017). The present yearly global production capacity of synthetic plastics sits at about forty million tonnes (Yildizhan, 2021). In developed countries, billions of plastic bottles are usually processed and synthesized annually (Stapleton, 2019). These developments translates into almost a quarter of global landfills occupied by plastic wastes, hence a significant contribution to global environmental pollution (Canopoli et al., 2018).

The geometric progressions at which oil-based plastics are being  made use of globally is a serious global issue (Turner, 2021). This is as a result of slowly developing infrastructural frameworks proposed for the management of plastic wastes. (Danso et al., 2019). Developments in the implementations of these infrastructural frameworks are presently taking place at a slow rate compared to the exponential increase in plastic wastes globally (Zhu et al., 2019). Various proper “STEM” research with respect to the development of novel technologies and materials in the “plastics” area are presently championed, and carried out (Iram et al., 2019). With the current level of global exposure to the adverse effects of oil-based plastics, there is a need to explore the possibilities and potentials of bio-plastics (Bano et al., 2017). Bio-plastics could be seen as the future of the “plastic” world (Bhagwat et al., 2020).

Oil-based plastics are usually the most globally utilized plastics in the world of “plastics” (Yimyai et al., 2020). They are usually synthesized via the addition or condensation polymerization reaction. These techniques are among the most globally used techniques in synthesizing diverse polymers (Lambert and Wagner, 2017).

Biodegradable plastic stands atop many effective and efficient answers to the “plastic problem” (Fotopoulou and Karapanagioti, 2017). A major component that differentiates bioplastics from the common synthetic plastic is the presence of PolyHydroxylAlkanoate (PHA); this contributes to the biodegradability of bioplastics (Zimmermann et al., 2020).  Bioplastics are similar to synthetic plastics in properties and other aspects, which makes them perfect substitutes for synthetic plastics (Pira, 2019). Bioplastics could exist as a full composition of the bioplastic itself or as a blend of bioplastics with other petro-chemical based products (White et al., 2020).  This provides an optimal way of replacing fully synthetic plastics while also maintaining their significantly beneficial properties (Bishop et al., 2021).

The research of production of biodegradable plastics did not just begin today, it had started a long time ago, but as the need for these form of plastics has become very essential and a major goal (Sidek et al., 2019).  In 1980, bioplastics were introduced, the purpose was to have plastics that are commonly decomposed, decompose on landfills so they would not take space (Lothfy et al., 2018). The use of starch as a natural, raw material for degradable thermoplastic is an important goal (.Filiciotto and Rothenberg, 2021).   However, starch alone cannot form plastics with satisfactory chemical and mechanical properties, thus using a modifier are important to improve these properties (Hwang et al., 2020).

Problem Statement

Plastics are synthetic polymers that show similarities to natural polymers attained from plants and other biological elements (Osswald et al., 2019). The present yearly global production capacity of synthetic plastics sits at about forty million tonnes. In developed countries, billions of plastic bottles are usually processed and synthesized annually. These developments translates into almost a quarter of global landfills occupied by plastic wastes, hence a significant contribution to global environmental pollution (Yildhizan, 2021;  Stapleton, 2019; Canopoli et al., 2018) .

Plastic is the best amongst all the others due to its lifelong properties. But, plastics cannot be degraded by natural processes in short periods and are left in the environment as solid waste, causing a lot of environmental pollution (Thakur et al., 2018). Burning or burying is not suitable for them as they emit materials that are detrimental, both to the environment and humans (Rahman and Bhoi, 2021). As many countries are banning the use of these oil based plastics, there needs to be a replacement and this replacement needs to be able to carry out the job the traditional plastics does (Arikan and Bilgen, 2019). This led to the research into the production of biodegradable plastics, which has therefore been the response to the problems associated with the plastic waste (Gadhave et al., 2018).

Aim and Objectives

The aim of this research project is to optimally synthesize biodegradable plastic films from agricultural wastes; using banana peels as the primary feedstock, with the following objectives:

• Objective 1: Synthesis of starch from banana peels.
• Objective 2: Utilization of a  Design of Experiment (DOE) framework to specify the amount of experiments to run.
• Objective 3:  Production of  bioplastics by addition of modifiers to the starch synthesized (Mitra et al., 2020).
• Objective 4: Testing the mechanical properties and composition of the synthesized biodegradable plastics.
• Objective 5:  Comparison of the mechanical properties and composition of the synthesized bio-plastics to conventional plastics.

Research Questions

The identified research questions for this project are provided below:

• How would the synthesis of starch from banana peels be carried out?
• How would we design the experiment?
• How would the bioplastics be produced?
• How would the product testing be carried out?

Deliverables

The deliverables of these project are a project report, samples of the synthesized products and gotten results. The synthesized products would be tested according to industry standards and literature to see how they compare with required standards.  Also, the report should contain a complete documentation of how the laboratory experiment was carried out, how various process variables were gotten, how the desired products were synthesized and how the results were arrived at.

Relevance

Biodegradable plastics is a form of “prevention is better than cure” treatment, this is a preventive method of taking care of the problem of plastic pollution rather than treatment method.

Methodology

This project focuses on secondary research, laboratory experiments and process analysis, and they are discussed below:

Secondary research

The secondary research in this project will utilize a systematic approach (Johnson et al., 2016) to review the works of literature. The steps involved in the systematic review of the literature are provided below:

• Step 1: Identify the research questions that can be used for the project.
• Step 2: Identify the keywords that should be used to research the works of literature.
• Step 3: Extract the journals and books that are appropriate for this project.
• Step 4: Write the literature review chapter.

Laboratory experiments

The laboratory experiments would cover a large chunk of this project. They would be carried out in stages, and as such described below;

• Stage 1:  Sourcing for the required feedstock (banana peels)
• Stage 2:  Sourcing for other required process inputs.
• Stage 3:  Developing an appropriate process route and optimal equipment arrangement for an efficient process setup.
• Stage 4:  Design of Experiment
• Stage 4:  Carrying out the process reactions.
• Stage 5:  Analyzing the process reactions.
• Stage 6:  Carrying out the phase separation.
• Stage 7:  Results Testing.

Process Analysis

The totality of the process reaction would be analyzed and this would also occur in stages;

• Stage 1:  Process Testing
• Stage 2:  Process Control
• Stage 3:  Process Optimization

Evaluation

The risk assessment conducted for this project is provided in the table below:

Table 1:  Risk assessment