It is a well-known fact that if we want to help the planet, we need more sustainable materials. Bio-derived materials are one potential option, but they must be economical if someone uses them. One of the final products that UD researchers and colleagues are investigating is the creation of bioresins for 3D printing.
For example, a better bio-based milk jug would be great. However, if the milk is sold for $ 20 per gallon because the cost of the jug has increased from $ 1 to $ 17, no one will buy it.
About Upcycling and Lignin
Leaded by Professor Thomas H. Epps, a team of researchers at the University of Delaware and a collaborator at Canmet ENERGY, III has exactly this kind of economics in mind when looking for ways to upcycle biomass into new products. I have put it. Taken Lignin, for example. Lignin is a component of plants and trees that provides the strength and rigidity to help the flora confront what Mother Nature throws.
However, in the pulp and paper industry, lignin is a waste left over from the manufacture of paper products. Known as technical lignin, this type of lignin is considered to be the dirtiest of all stains and cannot be used unless it is burned due to heat or added to the tire as a filler.
UD researchers say that this widely available resource, which produces about 100 million tonnes of technical lignin waste annually in pulp and paper mills around the world, is far more valuable.
The team has demonstrated the ability to efficiently convert industrially processed lignin into high-performance plastics such as bio-based 3D printing resins and valuable chemicals.Economical and Lifecycle analysis This approach reveals that it is also competitive with similar petroleum-based products.
A paper explaining the new method was published on Wednesday, January 19th. Science Advances.. This work was supported primarily by funding from the National Science Foundation Network’s Growth Convergence Research (NSF GCR) program, which aims to solve problems through multifaceted and interdisciplinary collaboration.
“No one really has the ability to break down something like technical lignin into a useful product, but at a lower cost and environmental impact than petroleum materials. Epps, who leads the NSFGCR initiative at UD and is a prominent professor of chemistry and biomolecular engineering at Alan and Myra Ferguson, said he is also co-appointed in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Daily ingredients overcome high pressure hurdles
One of the main issues with lignin upgrades is that most processes for upgrading lignin operate at very high pressures, are expensive, and are difficult to scale. The main drawbacks of current industrial technology include safety concerns, capital costs associated with traditional solvents, energy consumption, temperature or pressure. To overcome these challenges, the research team replaced methanol, the traditional solvent used to break down lignin, with glycerin, allowing the process to run at normal (surrounding) atmospheric pressure.
Glycerin is an inexpensive ingredient used in moisturizing liquid cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and lotions. But here, glycerin helps break down lignin into chemical constituents. It can be used to manufacture a wide range of bio-based products, from 3D printing resins to a wide variety of plastics, flavor and fragrance compounds, and antioxidants.
Glycerin provides the same chemical function as methanol, but the vapor pressure is much lower, eliminating the need for a closed system. This change allows researchers to perform reaction and separation steps at the same time, resulting in a more cost-effective system.
Operation at atmospheric pressure is safer. Equally important, it also provides an easy route to extend beyond small batches and run processes continuously, creating more material with less effort in cheaper, faster processes. ..
It takes about a year to develop a repeatable and consistent process, Undergraduate, Including Paula Pranda, co-lead author of the paper.
Currently a PhD student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Pranda helped optimize the process. She also investigated the available datasets on the types of products the team could create and estimated the physical properties of those materials. This allowed Yuqing Luo, a PhD student in chemical engineering in the group of co-author Marianti Ierapetritou, to model the system and see if it was economically feasible. ..
Luo’s research showed that the UD team’s low-pressure method can reduce the cost of producing bio-based pressure-sensitive adhesives from softwood craft lignin by up to 60% compared to high-pressure processes.While the cost benefits of the other types of technical lignin used in the study were not significant, conifer craft lignin was with pulp.
It was enlightening for the experimenter Pranda to work with fellow non-disciplinary students like Luo to focus on modeling chemical processes and understand costs.
“I’ve never been in a collaboration before, and I’ve gained insight into how other areas of chemical engineering work,” says Pranda.
According to Robert O’Dea, a PhD student at the Epps Lab and lead author of the dissertation, Luo’s contribution to economic modeling was the key to knowing whether to pursue this research line.
“We knew we could do it physically, but we needed to know if doing it on the scale of a chemical plant really made sense economically. Yuqing’s analysis Showed that it was possible, “said O’Dea.
By assessing the technical lignin waste from different types of pulping processes from Canadian project collaborator Canmet ENERGY, Luo puts upstream costs such as raw material prices and yields further downstream of the process. I was able to consider how it would affect my economy.
Analysis has shown that yield plays a major role in plant economics, but the operating costs of new low-pressure processes are in all cases traditional processes due to reduced capital costs and the production of valuable by-products. Significantly lower than. .. Researchers involved in process development are currently applying for patents on the atmospheric pressure process from colleagues in the Epps group and the research group of Professor Dionisios Vlachos of UD.
Luo also conducted a life cycle assessment to determine the emissions of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) from material production. Properly handling costs at each step helps researchers find ways to optimize their process and materials supply chain infrastructure.
“We were trying to get the big picture, not just the cost of the process, but the environmental impact of the overall operation,” Luo said.
Student collaboration arose from a conference between faculty and students engaged in material lifecycle management work at UD under the NSFGCR program.
“The NSFGCR program encourages simultaneous work on aspects such as materials science and environmental impact, which naturally creates influential work. Therefore, through interdisciplinary collaboration, multiple bottles. We are overcoming necks and hurdles at the same time, “says Epps.
And what about the possibilities of UD development methods that turn waste into valuable products?
“It shows that renewable resources are likely to be used to produce different types of plastics. There is no need to use fossil fuels. Plastics from renewable resources are also economically feasible.” Pranda said.
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