Every week we eat the equivalent of a credit card worth of micronanoplastics. The statement, pronounced by the head of the Pediatric Environmental Health Unit of La Arrixaca, Dr. Juan Antonio Ortega, summarizes well the invasion of petroleum-derived materials to which we are still subjected, and to which the scientific community has launched itself. to try to remedy it. One of these projects is that of researcher Pablo Martínez Rubio, with his 'Study and development of new materials based on bioplastics'. This is the name of the thesis that he is carrying out with a predoctoral contract from the Seneca Foundation at the Higher Technical School of Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT). The objective set is to obtain “new sustainable materials,” explains Martínez Rubio himself, with a focus “mainly on improving their resistance to wear.” His interest, therefore, goes beyond finding a sustainable substitute for conventional plastics, and also focuses on finding formulas that improve them. In summary, the study therefore involves obtaining new bioplastics to analyze their behavior after having modified them with sustainable additives.
Basically, its creator details, the project starts with a prior analysis of the starting materials, “to determine their composition, structure, response to temperature, etc.” And once modified with sustainable additives, they are subjected to “different processing techniques (such as extrusion, injection or 3D printing) to achieve a homogeneous material with a good finish.” A final analysis of the new material allows us to calibrate the effect obtained with each additive: “Thus, we study possible improvements in resistance to temperature, in its processability, in its degradability or in its mechanical and wear resistance, among other aspects.”
«Total involvement»
Trial and error, pure science to find the best formula with which to replace contaminating materials of fossil origin. The materials sought by Martínez Rubio's research, he summarizes, “will allow us little by little to replace traditional plastics derived from petroleum, which have a great environmental impact, with more 'green' ones with similar characteristics.”
THE KEYS
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Alternative
The scientific community has set out to find a degradable and sustainable replacement for the ubiquitous plastic. -
With additives
The research undertaken by Pablo Martínez includes the search for components that improve the new material. -
and projection
The objective is to continue the research beyond the planned date of March 2024, taking advantage of the fact that it is part of a European project.
The mission has the young specialist completely immersed. “My involvement in this project is total,” he says about the “topic on which I am writing my doctoral thesis thanks to the contract financed by the Seneca Foundation.”
The improvement of wear resistance, on which this work focuses, is as key as it has been little studied until now.
The project started in March 2022 and has a period of four years for its development, so it should be ready in March 2026. Although the objective is to give it continuity beyond this period, taking advantage of the fact that it is part of a project of the European research group “with greater scope”, entitled 'Challenges in sustainable tribology: new materials, lubricants and surfaces'.
New bioplastics
Along with Martínez Rubio and his two thesis directors, doctors Ramón Pamies and María Dolores Avilés, professors María Dolores Bermúdez and Francisco Carrión also actively collaborate in this research. The project also uses the collaboration of the Technological Center for Footwear and Plastics of the Region of Murcia, “to obtain the new materials and carry out some tests in its facilities”, and “from time to time we have the help of students from the different degrees of the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineering who wish to train in the field of developing new bioplastics and improving the wear resistance of materials”, a field in which there is still a lot of sustainable fabric , what to cut.
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The world waiting for a new material
Extrusion filaments of different bioplastics.
UPCT
Research on bioplastics is of great interest to the entire scientific community, as pointed out by UPCT researcher Pablo Martínez Rubio, who is now immersed in his thesis on the development of new materials based on these components of fossil origin. However, he adds, despite this notable trend, “the wear resistance of these new materials is a poorly studied topic both nationally and internationally.” In the specific case of the Region of Murcia, the UPCT Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering group, of which this predoctoral recruit from the Séneca Foundation is a part, is collaborating with the Footwear and Plastics Technology Center (Cetec) of Alhama de Murcia, “which is working on the production of bioplastics, such as PHBV, using bacteria from waste of various nature from the Region.” PHBV is a material developed from vegetables with the focus on replacing various synthetic plastics currently in use, with the advantage that it is degradable and does not pollute.
In Spain, there are other centers also very focused on this type of development, such as the Institute of Polymer Science and Technology (ICTP), in Madrid, and the Polymat research institute, which is located in the Basque Country. At an international level, Martínez Rubio highlights the work of Dr. Andreas Kailer, from the Fraunhofer Institute of Materials Mechanics in Freiburg (Germany), and Dr. Nazanin Emami, from the University of Luleå (Sweden). “Currently, we are in talks with these researchers to carry out a collaboration stay framed within the project.”
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