How to Make Corn-Based Plastic
Most of the world's corn is produced in the United States. Corn is a natural, biodegradable and renewable resource that can be used for many applications. The advances in energy production technology and the need to find alternatives to the nonrenewable source of petroleum-based plastics has led to an increase in investments in corn-chemistry. This has led corn to quickly becoming a leader in the biotechnology research. The end result has been polymers and pharmaceuticals made from corn.
Corn is converted to plastics over a series of reaction steps which start with starch that is derived from corn. The end product is a high-quality plastic called polylactic acid, or PLA. The PLA can be further blended with other polymers to produce a wider variety of usable plastics. This conversion is done on a commercial scale.
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Instructions
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Hydrolyze the starch that's found in corn to make glucose.
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Ferment the glucose to make sodium-lactate
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Purify the sodium-lactate to lactic acid. The sodium lactate contains impurities like proteins and other cellular byproducts. The lactic acid is then concentrated to remove any leftover water and remove the impurities.
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De-polymerize and oligo-condense in the lactic acid to make dilactide. This step involves the condensation and thermal polymerization of the acid to produces the cyclic prepolymer dilactide.
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Open the dilactide ring through a ring opening polymerization to make a polyactide or Polyactic Acid. This is the biodegradable polymer that has similar properties to PET or Polyethylene terephthalate. This step involves using a catalyst like tin salt to produce a high-molecular weight PLA. At this point, the PLA can be further processed to make plastic film or sheets, bottles, fibers, engineering plastics, and surgical threads or implants.
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