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Large areas of land are currently covered in plastic waste. Biodegradable additives will help speed up the biodegradation process of plastics so that plastic pileups will be less frequent. [19] Biodegradable additives have the potential to significantly reduce the accumulation of plastics in the environment.
In feedstock recycling, waste plastic is converted into its starting chemicals, which can then become fresh plastic. This involves higher energy and capital costs . Alternatively, plastic can be burned in place of fossil fuels in energy recovery facilities , or biochemically converted into other useful chemicals for industry. [ 14 ]
The waste management infrastructure currently recycles regular plastic waste, incinerates it, or places it in a landfill. Mixing biodegradable plastics into the regular waste infrastructure poses some dangers to the environment. [36] Thus, it is crucial to identify how to correctly decompose alternative plastic materials.
Additives are chemicals blended into plastics to improved their performance or appearance. [34] [35] Additives are therefore one of the reasons why plastic is used so widely. [36] Plastics are composed of chains of polymers. Many different chemicals are used as plastic additives. A randomly chosen plastic product generally contains around 20 ...
Polymer degradation is the reduction in the physical properties of a polymer, such as strength, caused by changes in its chemical composition.Polymers and particularly plastics are subject to degradation at all stages of their product life cycle, including during their initial processing, use, disposal into the environment and recycling. [1]
Stabilizers are used at all stages of the polymer life-cycle. They allow plastic items to be produced faster and with fewer defects, extend their useful lifespan, and facilitate their recycling. [1] However they also continue to stabilise waste plastic, causing it to remain in the environment for longer. Many different types of plastic exist ...
Biodegradation of any plastic is a process that happens at solid/liquid interface whereby the enzymes in the liquid phase depolymerize the solid phase. [71] Certain types of bioplastics as well as conventional plastics containing additives are able to biodegrade. [72]
Plastic compounding scheme. Compounding consists of preparing plastic formulations by mixing and/or blending polymers and additives in a molten state to achieve the desired characteristics. [1] These blends are automatically dosed with fixed setpoints usually through feeders/hoppers.