New Scientist Breaking News - 'Sugar plastic' could reduce reliance on petroleum

A new way to make plastics out of sugar could help reduce the world’s reliance on petroleum. The technique could ultimately allow industry to make plastics from high-fructose corn syrups or other plant materials.
Companies and research organisations around the world are experimenting with plant-based plastics in a bid to lower carbon dioxide emissions and reduce the use of petroleum as oil stocks decline.
Now researchers led by chemical engineer James A. Dumesic at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have developed an efficient way to convert fructose into a polymer precursor.
The researchers were interested in a chemical called 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), which can easily be converted into furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). This is similar in structure to a petroleum-based precursor for the type of plastic commonly used in plastic bottles.
Unusable waste
But HMF has previously been difficult and expensive to make in quantity. This is because as HMF is produced, it reacts with any fructose remaining in the solution to produce an unusable waste material.
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 above the water, preventing further contact with any remaining fructose. Further chemicals were added to prevent troublesome side reactions.
The result was a reaction that converted 90% of the fructose in a solution to HMF. Once the reaction was complete, the solvent was boiled away, leaving the HMF to be turned into plastic.
Biodegradable plastic
Bio-based polymers are not new. One of the oldest plastics is celluloid, made out of the naturally occurring polymer cellulose. More recently, bacteria have been used to convert sugar into PHA, a biodegradable plastic.
But the researchers hope that because of its different chemical structure, HMF will allow engineers to design plastics with a range of different properties.
"There are many types of petroleum-based polymers with different properties and it will be necessary to develop many types of bio-based polymers with different properties as alternatives," says Timothy D. Leathers, a research geneticist at the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service in Peoria, Illinois.
Herbert Vogel, a chemical engineer at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, says that the next step will be for someone to build a pilot plant to make large amounts of HMF that can be turned into plastics. But he warned that industry has little incentive to do so while petrochemicals remain relatively cheap.
Journal reference: Science (vol 312, p 1933)