Depolymerization of Post-Consumer Polylactic Acid Products

Polylactic acid (PLA)

This website provides an excellent overview of PLA as a polymer, its properties, and manufacture. This web article describes the production of lactic acid from biomass by microbial fermentation coupled to a poly-merization process to make PLA. The article is a bit dated and its industrial projections are now seen to be a bit over-optimistic. NatureWorks is the company that started large-scale p...

Sustainable Concrete with Industrial and Post-Consumer By-Products

Concrete is a long-lasting and less energy consuming construction material than steel and Aluminum. However, the concrete industry is the single largest consumer of natural resources. Several places around the world are facing faster rates of depletion of the resources needed for the manufacturing of portland cement, mining of aggregates, and water for making concrete. Each one of these materia...

Investigation of drug release from paclitaxel loaded polylactic acid nanofibers

Objective(s): In this study, drug loaded electrospun nanofibrous mats were prepared and drug release and mechanism from prepared nanofibers were investigated.  Materials and Methods: Paclitaxel (PTX) loaded polylactic acid (PLA) nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning. The effects of process parameters, such as PTX concentration, tip to collector distance, voltage, temperature and flow rate...

Consumer Products

The Degradation of Polylactic Acid Aiber

Polylactic acid (PLA) fiber, also known as corn fiber, is made of corn and other grains through fermentation, polymerization and spinning. Thus it is biodegradable and environmentally friendly. Three kinds of buffer solutions with PH values of 4, 7.2 and 11 were made for the investigation of the degradation properties of PLA. The experimental results showed that the degradation of polylactic ac...