Photobiodegradability
The term ‘Photo degradability’ is a hybridisation of two words, photo oxidation and photo degradability. It defines clearly a two step process initiated in this case by the natural minerals premixing to degrade the polymer chain (break up) and make it available for photo degradability within the environment when a treated item has finished its useful life.The phase of sunlight UV can transforms the polymer from long strands to much smaller lengths. This simple but effective reaction does two things, first it reduces the molecular weight of the polymer by 'UV photo cutting' the polymer chain to accelerate catalytic reaction to break the carbon-carbon (aliphatic) bonds at a molecular level, secondly it makes the molecular fragment more 'hydrophilic'. The photo degradability aspect refers to the conversion of these lower molecular weight species by sunlight UV into biomass/dust, CO2 and H2O in an ambient environment.
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The film is 'blown' as normal with no operational change to the process equipment but lower melting temperature setting, this means that Eco materials can modify polymer recipes making them photo-biodegradable by only a premixing Eco materials at a predetermined amount for reducing production cost and energy consumption. In essence the polymer has been altered into a group of materials which are both available for UV photo oxidation and are photodegradable. These materials if in a suitable environment which is natural sunlight can now be safely degraded into the environment. This final step of converting the available carbon from the polymer into CO2 is called mineralisation, the rate at which CO2 is generated can be measured and provided with a ‘rate’ for this stage of UV photo oxidation.
Degradable Eco plastic product will not photo degrade in your home when kept indoors and away from sunlight. The speed of photodegradability can be controlled via adding UV blocking agents. A photodegradable plastic product can let us enjoy both an extraordinary product without having to worry about trash management. Attaining the correct balance to control the speed of photo degradability is vital, the good news is, with today's technology we can let us attain just that! |