Los Alamos National Laboratory: Bioplastics Point Way To Environmentally Sustainable, Green Future
Summary
Non-fossil energy sources and developing environmentally friendly plastics highlight the breadth of the broader challenge of decarbonizing the economy for a sustainable future. Making it from petroleum is doubly problematic as it helps perpetuate our global dependence on fossil energy and it continues the long-term environmental degradation caused by synthetic plastics, which can take several hundred years to break down into simpler materials. Sponsored by the Department of Energy, the broadly inclusive I-WEST initiative brings together states, regional universities and colleges, research institutions, local communities and Native American tribes and nations to create a sustainable-energy economy. Figuring out which algae, for instance, can produce the polymers necessary to create a plastic with the most desirable properties is a time-consuming and expensive task, drawing heavily on biology and chemistry and riddled with inevitable holes in the data. Finally, the team plans to develop AI software that can, for example, virtually test additives and the effects of polymer blends in the material when making it to optimize its large-scale production.