Titre: Sustainable Polymer Research at Dow Chemical
Résumé:
In this talk, I will discuss some of the sustainability-focused industrial research that I am doing at Dow Chemical. I will share two projects that I have been working on, one which targets recyclability, and the second biodegradability. The first short story will focus on cross-linked polyolefin polymers traditionally used for long-term, high durability applications such as shoe soles and weatherstripping that are difficult to recycle and thus challenged when it comes to sustainable end-of-life solutions. Our team has developed a new chemistry which can be melt grafted into polyethylene based materials to form dynamic covalent adaptive networks. At the right processing conditions, these polyolefin CANs can disassociate and result in reprocessing followed by recovery of the networks. The second story focuses on polyacrylic acid – which is known to be poorly biodegradable at high molecular weights, but less studied at low molecular weights. I’ll discuss the synthesis and characterization of polyacrylic acid oligomers, their biodegradability, and our attempts to make larger macrostructures with the properties of polyacrylic acid, but improved biodegradability.
