Plastics have huge carbon emissions: the production of this petroleum-based material brings at least 100 million tons of carbon emissions per year. Today, an American research team has invented an inexpensive way to make plastic from sugar and corn cobs. If the plastic can be produced at a low enough cost, then one day it will replace the most common plastic in the world, polyethylene terephthalate. Food packaging bags, soda bottles, and even polyester cotton contain PET. PET recycling machine

For decades, oil has been the raw material for almost all plastics, from polyethylene to propylene. However, the oil crisis of the 1970s prompted researchers to look for alternatives to using plastics instead of oil to produce plastics. DuPont and other chemical companies have made progress. But scientists have been looking for a bio-based alternative to PET, and the most promising is polyethylene high-foam. Researchers have used renewable energy to successfully develop furan dicarboxylic acid, a major component of PEF. However, the cost of this method is high.

To this end, Jim Dumesic, an engineer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his team set out to find ways to reduce costs. Ten years later, they found that the key to achieving this method was a solvent called gamma-valerolactone. GVL is a colorless liquid that is available from renewable sources such as corn cobs. When Dumesic and colleagues added GVL and an organic acid catalyst to water, they converted fructose, a sugar found in fruits, vegetables, and corn syrup, into an organic compound that acts as a precursor to FDCA. Because GVL performed so well, the Dumesic team needed only a small amount of fructose to produce a large amount of pure FDCA.

The latest research co-author, Ali Hussain Motagamwala, a chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, said the new approach addresses three issues in plastics production. First, it uses renewable carbon sources rather than fossil fuels. Second, previous attempts to make FDCA from renewable sources required the use of corrosive acids and expensive reaction vessels, and new methods do not require these. Third, scientists can use the final product FDCA as a reaction catalyst and recycle the GVL solvent. This reduces costs and saves energy compared to existing methods. “The latest approach makes the whole process greener.”