Making Plastic Out of Pollution  

Scientific American has an article on using wastes (like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide) to make biodegradable plastics while reducing the energy required in manufacturing them - Making Plastic Out of Pollution.

Plastics have dramatically changed the way we live, allowing us to fabricate new and innovative tools, containers and even replaceable body parts like hips and knees, while also spawning a host of undesirable by-products, including nonbiodegradable trash and pollution from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Now an emerging industry is trying to polish plastic's environmentally tarnished image by using waste products such as carbon dioxide and Escherichia coli bacteria to make biodegradable and renewable polymers.

This trend continued Wednesday when Novomer, Inc., an Ithaca, N.Y.–based company that manufactures ecofriendly plastics and polymers using CO2, announced that it had raised $6.6 million in a fund-raising campaign (led by venture capital firms Physic Ventures in San Francisco and Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, Mass.). The company says it plans to use the new monies to expand both its production capacity and development efforts. This new cash infusion comes on the heels of small business grants from the National Science Foundation ($500,000) and the U.S. Department of Energy ($100,000) for continued development of its polymerization catalyst systems.

The key ingredients in Novomer's polymer-making process are metallic catalysts, such as beta-diiminate zinc acetate, which bond greenhouse-gas causing molecules such as CO2, as well as carbon monoxide and other renewable materials, to liquid epoxides. ...

Prior to its work, polymers based on biological materials were possible but they were more of a novelty because the prohibitive manufacturing cost discouraged large-scale production. Novomer's process is different from other bioplastic-making efforts in several ways, primarily because it is done at room temperature using relatively little energy, says company president, Charles Hamilton. This means that fossil fuels are not burned during the process. "We combine liquid epoxides with carbon dioxide in a reactor that's like a pressure cooker," he says. "Throw in a catalyst, and those two parts come together like a zipper. You create a very long chain of epoxides bonded to carbon dioxide." ...

Peoples considers other bioplastics producers to be "fellow travelers," crucial to establishing a good reputation for polymers made from biodegradable and renewable resources. Such solidarity is important, because "it'll be a long time before you'll knock petroleum-based products out of the market," he says. "The bottom line is that people need to know these biodegradable plastics are available."

Efforts to continue making oil-based plastics could be hampered by the growing price of oil, even as the public's consumption of plastic materials grows unabated. "The future need for these materials is so great," Coates says, "there's plenty of space for all of these [bioplastics] companies."