Scientists from King’s College London’s (KCL’s) Department of Chemistry have recently joined a Europe-wide endeavour to pioneer biodegradable food packaging made of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). Staff Writer Aarya Edara discusses the research behind this.
PHA is a polymer that can be produced by bacteria.
The project, entitled ‘SATISPHACTION’, will span over four years, nine institutes, and has a budget of €3.7 million. The consortium is headed by research centre AINIA, and its goal is to diminish the prevalence of single-use, non-renewable plastics and maximise sustainable packaging.
Dr Francisco Martin-Martinez and Dr Micaela Matta are the KCL researchers participating in this effort. They will employ computational chemistry and AI to model and design PHA polymers that are decomposable and chemically stable (they will not react with the surroundings).
Their research will also involve devising a way to make the hydrocarbon chains mass-producible, as well as recyclable.
Hydrocarbons are compounds with varying combinations and arrangements of hydrogen and carbon. Chains of hydrocarbons have significance in the industry, such as in fuels and plastics like PHA.
This is beneficial as it enables reusability and drops production costs.
Drs Matta and Martin-Martinez will also model both chemical and enzyme-induced recycling procedures effective for the PHA plastic, so that it can be broken down into its primary components and manufactured into packaging again.
This will cut the production costs of the plastic, as well as its environmental impact during its life cycle.
Conventional plastics significantly affect the environment as they rely heavily on fossil fuels and their pollution can have detrimental effects.
Annually, over 460 million tonnes of plastic are produced worldwide, and 90% of that contributes to environmental pollution. Food packaging is heavily correlated with this problem due to its prominence in markets and because it cannot easily be recycled using conventional methods.
This is why PHAs are a resourceful alternative to these plastics: the raw materials composing them are naturally produced by bacteria. Additionally, they are entirely biodegradable and safe for food contact.
However, PHAs are currently difficult to manoeuvre and cannot necessarily be produced cheaply. This causes companies to integrate them with other bioplastics, constraining their decomposability.
“With SATISPHACTION, King’s will be involved in understanding the complete lifecycle of that circular economy – from leveraging AI to design a bespoke materials with eco-friendly characteristics, to designing new formulations from base PHA materials. We’re happy to contribute to one of the many ways that science is making a positive difference in the world.”
Dr Francisco Martin-Martinez, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry and Natural Sciences, King’s College London News Centre
After prototypes of the polymers are designed, Polykey, an industry partner, will manufacture them and provide feedback regarding the original designs. Their eventual goal is to replace regular plastic food packaging throughout Europe.
Following this, partner institutes working with the KCL scientists, like AINA, will analyse methods to break the polymers down. Their collective goal is to revert the polymers to their original building blocks, to enable recycling and reuse.
Once the outlines for PHA are finalised, the researchers may use machine learning to advance the design of other PHA arrangements, additionally predicting their properties.
This would – in the future – accelerate the synthesis of possible solutions, which would quicken breakthroughs and increase the real-life applications of this sustainable and viable solution.
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