This is not "new" news, but I just heard a news clip about it on the local progressive station in Madison, Wisconsin. Once again, it highlights the value of a healthy state university system, and gives one more pat on the back to the University of Wisconsin for fighting the scientific good fight.
The discovery this time? How to make plastic out of something that grows out of the ground, rather than something pumped out.
Clicky.
The nerd content of this diary has been taken from the Tech website of New Scientist Magazine. The
article, published on June 29th of this year (a shorter
print version of this story was published on July 8), discusses research being conducted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison by professor
James Dumesic. Dumesic has been conducting research on the wonderfully-named compound, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (or HMF if you don't have the time), and its potential to replace petroleum as the standard foundation for common plastics.
The problem with HMF is the same problem that faces many alternative sciences (such as ethanol, "clean coal," and hydrogen fuel): inefficiency. With HMF, the inefficiency was an uphill battle to keep newly-produced HMF from reacting with the rest of the fructose from which it is extracted. This required a substantial investment to counteract, and we all know that the phrase "substantial investment" is the kiss of death to any process trying to supplant an oil-based technology.
Fortunately, professor Dumesic and his team have been able to sidestep the problem of overly-sociable HMF. New Scientist says it with such overwhelming flair, I'll quote them here:
To change fructose to HMF, the researchers "dehydrated" it by adding an acid to strip off water molecules. Then, to prevent the newly formed HMF from reacting with the remaining fructose, they added a solvent.
This bound to the HMF and floated abo e the water, preventing further contact with any remaining fructose. Further chemicals were added to prevent troublesome side reactions.
(see, wasn't that gripping?)
In fact, this is pretty great. Plastics have long been one of those applications of petrolem that many people have just given up on. They're somewhat inescapable. We can take our reusable bags to the grocery store and wear mukluks all we want, but petroleum-based plastics are hard to shed completely. Celluloid offers a biodegradable plastic substrate, but from what I understand, it just isn't as flexible (in terms of multiple applications) as petro-plastic. HMF provides that flexibility.
So what can we do to promote this research? Well, you could direct a financial gift to the College of Engineering, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, by going here (instructions for directing a gift are on the page). You could contact big companies like DuPont and tell them that you want them to support this research for the good of the environment and (more persuasively, perhaps) the American economy.
But most importantly, learn about it. Read about it. Talk about it. The more people who know that this research is happening, the better it will be for the economic viability for any future production of HMF-based plastics. It represents the breaking of one more link in the oil-dependency chain.