As oil depletes chemicals that are made from oil become more costly and scarce. Many of these chemicals or similar chemicals can be made from biomass. One such chemical is polylactic acid made by NatureWorks LLC, located in Blair, Nebraska and owned by Cargill. Polylactic acid (PLA) is made from corn and its petrochemical competitors are polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polystyrene.
At its current state of development PLA is competitive with oil at $33 a barrel and as production increases and more experience is gained, it will go down in price. PLA is biodegradable and can be fabricated on the same machinery as petrochemical plastics. It starts to biodegrade after about 8 months on the store shelf; in a 140 F landfill it degrades within weeks into water and carbon dioxide. Conventional plastics do not biodegrade and are filling up our landfills, roadsides and oceans with billions of pounds of debris. Disposable plastic cups,"paper" plates and beverage bottles are a natural for this material.
Over 120 customers use NatureWorks PLA including: Biota bottled water, Wild Oates for all of its deli packaging, Del Monte for fruit and vegetable containers, Sony Walkmans for some of its parts, Versace is making apparel out of PLA fibers, and McDonald's in Europe is using it for cold cups.
Now that we have these plastics from biomass, what is next? BASF has a starch based polymer and DuPont is developing a corn based polymer called Sorona. I will be looking for more articles on other biochemicals. I wonder if the demand for this combined with the demand for corn ethanol will ever have an effect on the price of corn. PLA is made by a fermentation process as is ethanol. It could be made from any lignocellulosic material and could take advantage of the same enzymes that are being developed for producing ethanol.
Resources:
NatureWorks LLC website
"Plastic Fantastic", Forbes, March 28, 2005, pp 108-111
"One Word of Advice: Now It's Corn", Wall Street Journal Online, October 12, 2004
Technocrati tags: biochemicals
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