Location: Plant Polymer Research
Project Number: 5010-41000-188-001-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 15, 2022
End Date: Sep 30, 2025
Objective:
The first objective is to develop environment friendly green methods to modify biopolymers into value added polymers and chemicals.
The second objective is to design novel sustainable materials as innovative active food packaging through novel processing, chemical modifications and characterization.
Our focus will be on grafting reactions, urethane formations, and redox reactions (oxidation and reduction) involving cellulose and hemicellulose, followed by similar modifications to vegetable oil, corn fiber, wheat straw and pennycress weed.
Approach:
Our plan is to explore such reactions as grafting, urethane formations, and redox reactions on cellulose and hemicellulose. If successful (and time permitting), we shall apply them on corn fiber, wheat straw and pennycress. Of course, these materials need to be evaluated in terms of their characteristics and performance, and prioritization will be done according to the evaluation results.
In the process of carrying out this project, we shall not be involved with the development of ionic liquid technology but use them as tools for our reactions.
