Significance of a Non-Thermal Plasma Treatment on LDPE Biodegradation with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa.

Laurence Scally,Lars Weigang,Patrick Cullen,Vladimir Milosavljevic,Miroslav Gulan

doi:10.3390/ma11101925

Abstract

The use of plastics has spanned across almost all aspects of day to day life. Although their uses are invaluable, they contribute to the generation of a lot of waste products that end up in the environment and end up polluting natural habitats such as forests and the ocean. By treating low-density polyethylene (LDPE) samples with non-thermal plasma in ambient air and with an addition of ≈4% CO2, the biodegradation of the samples can be increased due to an increase in oxidative species causing better cell adhesion and acceptance on the polymer sample surface. It was, however, found that the use of this slight addition of CO2 aided in the biodegradation of the LDPE samples more than with solely ambient air as the carbon bonds measured from Raman spectroscopy were seen to decrease even more with this change in gas composition and chemistry. The results show that the largest increase of polymer degradation occurs when a voltage of 32 kV is applied over 300 s and with a mixture of ambient air and CO2 in the ratio 25:1.

Highlights

Fossil fuels have been extensively used to fabricate various polymers that span uses from the medical to food industry and permeate multiple facets of day-to-day life
By using the optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and optical absorption spectroscopy (OAS) results from the optical measurement and comparing them with the changes seen in the Raman spectra, the optimum parameter setting to induce the greatest amount of biodegradation of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) can be ascertained
It has been found that the use of non-thermal plasma (NTP) discharge for the treatment of LDPE strips leads to an increase of its biodegradation in a bacterial broth media containing Ps. aeruginosa

Summary

Introduction

Fossil fuels have been extensively used to fabricate various polymers that span uses from the medical to food industry and permeate multiple facets of day-to-day life. The current infrastructure of material creation allows different polymers to be fabricated through processes that give fine control of material properties and gives rise to versatile approaches to tailor these materials for multiple needs [1,2,3]. They are invaluable due to their durability and ease of application to multiple areas, plastics made from fossil fuels are highly resistant to many natural processes of degradation [4]. Some of the most widely used polymers to date include low density polyethylene

Methods

Results

Conclusion