Abstract
Bio-based polyethylene (bio-PE) is chemically identical to conventional fossil-based PE. The only method to differentiate them is radiocarbon (14C) analysis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of liquid scintillation counting (LSC) as a screening method. The pellets of bio-PE and fossil-PE were soaked in a scintillation cocktail, and measured by LSC. The counting rate of bio-PE increased as a function of time and then saturated (35 ± 1.7 cpm) in 30 h. This counting rate was much higher than that of fossil-PE (3.3 ± 0.5 cpm). Pre-soaking of PE in toluene (the solvent of the scintillation cocktail) enhanced the counting rate of bio-PE. Bio-PE with higher crystallinity showed a lower counting rate. These results suggest that the solvent of the scintillation cocktail permeated into the non-crystalline regions, inducing scintillation of bio-PE in the solid state. LSC is a potential high-throughput screening method to detect bio-PE.
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