Plastic trash is everywhere in the environment. Bottles made from fossil fuels litter the side of the road, screw caps pepper the beaches, bags waft down the street.
So the notion of a plastic made from algae that biodegrades in nature as quick as a banana peel decays is pretty exciting for those concerned about plastic pollution.
“If it winds up in the yard or ocean, it will decompose,” said Eleftheria Roumeli, a University of Washington assistant professor of materials science and engineering whose lab developed the bioplastic.
The material has a number of additional features. It’s easy to recycle into new items. It’s fire resistant and will self-extinguish and char when exposed to a flame. It’s machinable and potentially strong enough for use in longer-lasting products such as furniture.
It’s also made from an-easy-to-grow blue-green algae called spirulina that’s an ingredient in products such as cosmetics and protein supplements. Growing the algae removes CO2 from the air.
The bioplastic is so impressive it caught the attention of Bichlien Nguyen, a principal researcher for Microsoft, which led to a gift supporting the lab. The money came from the Microsoft Climate Research Initiative, an effort launched last year to foster collaborations and innovation in climate tech.
Microsoft in 2020 announced an initiative aiming to eliminate some of its waste streams. A plastic like the one Roumeli is developing could help with this goal, as well as the company’s climate efforts. The material could one day be used to make computer cases or racks to hold servers and other electronics in the facilities that provide cloud services.
“We are collaborating with academic leaders like Eleftheria and her team to use AI and machine learning to accelerate research to address these urgent challenges,” Nguyen said via email. “Together, we’re working to create more sustainable materials, shorten their development time, and design improved properties.”
Roumeli recently published her research in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, and Nguyen, who is also an assistant professor at the UW’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, was a contributing author.
Roumeli’s lab additionally received a $150,000 gift from tech giant Meta, which is also interested in sustainable materials for electronics. The UW did not disclose the size of Microsoft’s gift.
While the new plastic has great promise, there are still significant hurdles before it can be commercialized. The most urgent challenge to address is that the material isn’t waterproof.
“It’s very important for us to solve that,” Roumeli said. She’s applying for patents for what the lab has accomplished so far, while her team is engineering a solution to impart water resistance to the material.
When that piece is solved, it could be relatively straightforward to scale production of the plastic. Roumeli, who did her Ph.D. research on conventional petroleum-based plastics, intentionally developed the algal plastic using the same kinds of equipment and temperature conditions that have commonly been used in plastics production. That way the feed stock changes, but the infrastructure doesn’t.
Another plus is that the spirulina can be used as a whole organism and doesn’t require complicated processing and solvents to separate its components before turning into a plastic.
That said, Roumeli appreciates that plastic manufacturing is a difficult industry to change following decades of successfully producing high-performing plastics from fossil fuels. She also believes that hers won’t be the only solution, but hopefully is one of many that addresses the climate impacts of plastic and the waste the materials create.
The Seattle Aquarium, for example, recently conducted research for an international contest held to identify bioplastics that are safe in the marine environment. The winning product was made from seaweed.
“This is an important problem,” Roumeli said, “that we cannot look away from.”
Other authors from the paper titled “Fabricating Strong and Stiff Bioplastics from Whole Spirulina Cells” are UW researchers Hareesh Iyer, Paul Grandgeorge, Andrew Jimenez, Ian Campbell, Mallory Parker, Michael Holden, Mathangi Venkatesh, and Marissa Nelsen.
